Virtual Product Champion
Why might you need a Virtual Product Champion?
Our clients are increasingly looking for experts to work remotely (and seamlessly) with their teams to solve Product problems and help to deliver Product and business success.
Do you share this need?
It could be because:
- You have a burning need to solve a Product challenge
- You want to demonstrate what good Product Management looks like
- You work in a country or area where Product expertise is thin on the ground
- Your business or market is changing and you need help to adapt
- You want to make new Products but do not have the resources readily available
Why Brainmates?
We have been championing Product Management since 2004. We’ve trained thousands of Product Managers and helped hundreds of organisations to solve their Product and business problems. We see our purpose as helping people and companies to build better Products to make a better world.
Your Virtual Product Champion will apply the same methodologies and processes which we have used to help hundreds of the Asia-Pacific’s leading businesses, but remotely. We use technology solutions like video-conferencing and Slack, or your company’s preferred technology platforms, to lead your Product team to solutions that bring about long-term business success.
Our consultants are expert Product Managers with a track record of success in multiple Product companies – they have the skills and flexibility to quickly make an impact in your organisation. We vet, train and coach all of our consultants in practical, hands-on Product Management techniques which we developed and have used and refined over our 15+ years of operation.
I don’t see Brainmates as consultants and I think that’s a really good thing. I feel traditional consultants present a solution which requires you to use their methodology. That’s not what Brainmates does. Brainmates works with you to understand the problem and then helps you to solve it. They use their knowledge of Product Management to develop a customised solution then help you to implement and embed it so it really makes a difference for the long term.
It was a pleasure working with Brainmates. They brought in outstanding product management fundamentals and a data-driven rigour matched with customer-oriented design into our business. Our organisation is left in a better place than it was before they started. I’ve gotten tremendous feedback from everyone that’s worked with them cross-functionally including engineers, marketing and compliance.
How does it work?
A typical engagement lasts from 2 – 8 months and consists of three phases:
Remote working tools for Product and business success
To ensure your Virtual Product Champion’s success we will agree a detailed meeting schedule and way of working with you in advance of the first phase. We use video calls/workshops to complete the key activities and set up a shared Slack channel for regular communication. In the early days of the engagement we would have a daily check-in via video conference with your key contact to ensure regular progress and build confidence. As the engagement progressses these regular video conferences would evolve into video ‘stand-ups’ and weekly planning sessions.
Need help solving your Product or business problems?
Give us a call on 1800 272 466 or drop us an email.
The remote consulting
phases and framework
A typical engagement lasts from 2 – 8 months and consists of three phases:
Assess
Your Champion spends the first 2 to 4 weeks getting to know your organisation, teams, ways of working and Products. After they gain a deep understanding of your business, your Champion will come up with a bespoke plan and rough timeline of how they will achieve your business objectives. After gaining the confidence and buy in of your stakeholders we progress to Phase 2.
Design and develop
Together, you and your Champion now action the plan defined in Phase 1. Using Brainmates’ Product Management skills and techniques combined with your team’s subject matter knowledge you co-design solutions which enhance your team’s skills and grow your Product or business. We work alongside your team to execute the plan and produce artefacts like journey maps, roadmaps and user stories for your team to use well into the future. We will teach Product Management and stakeholder management skills and techniques to help you and your team gain buy in from senior leaders to ensure the plan’s overall success.
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In this phase your Champion will coach your team (using the Tell Me, Show Me, Let Me method) to apply their learnings into their daily work. This includes helping the team to execute the plan, while providing ongoing feedback and guidance and course correcting with support, resources and workshops when required. Once the plan is implemented or your team feels confident to complete it on their own, then the engagement formally ends.
But you still have Brainmates on tap!
Once we complete a consulting engagement we know your business and you have a highly experienced team of Brainmates Product Managers on tap, when and if you need further support.
Some of our superstar clients
Virtual Product Champions
Co-Founder and CEO
Adrienne Tan
Adrienne is a Product geek who is well-known for her green hair, forthright opinions and formidable Product expertise.
She has been championing Product Management since 2000, earning international recognition (and an enormous LinkedIn following) for raising the profile of the Product Management profession within Australia and the Asia Pacific. In this capacity she regularly speaks at business and Product events in Australia and around the world.
Head of Consulting
Sandeep Gondekar
Sandeep is our resident Product consultant hero, who we nickname Sandeep the Great or Sandeep the Grey depending on whether or not he’s shaved. Sandeep has been in Product Management since 2003, working with some of the world’s leading brands such as eBay, Fairfax and eftpos, and from various industries such as e-commerce, media and payments.
Senior Consultant and Coach
Regina Campbell
Regina is a Product Management Consultant and Coach, who is our resident efficiency expert extraordinaire. She has a knack for streamlining exceptionally complex systems, tools and processes into easy to understand and usable frameworks – paired with simple processes to keep the product growing. She is hyper-focused on the end users of Products and how to understand, empathise and solve their problems, as well as on solving the pain points of those who build the products themselves. She believes that learning is a never ending journey and that “failures” are a pivotal part of this, which is why she is continually iterating on her fast prototypes.
Senior Consultant
Natalie Yan-Chatonsky
CNat is our resident dreamer, who loves to wax lyrical on better ways of creating companies, culture and award-winning products. Nat has been working in Product since 1999, across various stages of the product lifecycle, including new product development and growing existing products and services. She worked at IBM and Yahoo! in the early days of digital, and has worked alongside numerous brands, including Cochlear, Fairfax Digital, and News Ltd. More recently she worked on the rollout of the New Payments Platform (NPP) and applies product management practices to her startup.
Consultant, Coach and Head of Community
Marco Tebaldi
Marco is a Product Management Consultant and Coach who is our social butterfly. The gentle nature of this softly-spoken Italian means people gravitate towards him a worthy talent when you’re in charge of organising our meet-ups and growing and supporting our Product community. Marco joined Brainmates in late 2018 and has a background as a Technology Advisor. He moved into Product about two years ago as a Consultant and has worked with brands including NAB, ANZ Bank, Macquarie Group, Telstra, NSW Department of Finance, Services and Innovation, and the Australian Digital Transformation Agency.
Adrienne Tan
Co-Founder and CEO
Adrienne is a Product geek who is well-known for her green hair, forthright opinions and formidable Product expertise.
She has been championing Product Management since 2000, earning international recognition (and an enormous LinkedIn following) for raising the profile of the Product Management profession within Australia and the Asia Pacific. In this capacity she regularly speaks at business and Product events in Australia and around the world.
Adrienne is a highly experienced senior product and business leader with broad expertise across various aspects of business such as business and product strategy, stakeholder management and product design and development. She specialises in product leadership and loves to manage, coach and nurture teams of product managers and tech leads.
She has worked alongside brands like Lend Lease, Foxtel, eftpos, Telstra, Xero, Core Logic, Standards Australia, eBay, Disney, NITV, and Kennards.
Adrienne spends (and replenishes) her inexhaustible energy through punishing fitness sessions and then relaxes with wine, cheese and chat.
Sandeep Gondekar
Head of Consulting
Sandeep is our resident Product consultant hero, who we nickname “Sandeep the Great” or “Sandeep the Grey” depending on whether or not he’s shaved. Sandeep has been in Product Management since 2003, working with some of the world’s leading brands such as eBay, Fairfax and eftpos, and from various industries such as e-commerce, media and payments.
Sandeep is an expert in product vision and strategy skills which he brought to the fore when working with a client in the payments industry that was facing significant business challenges. Technology and consumer behaviour were rapidly changing and this organisation was unable to compete and stay relevant. Sandeep helped the client to formulate a multi-pronged strategy so that they could close the gap on competitors while also creating a robust vision to regain its leadership position. But strategy was only one part of the change the organisation required. It was absolutely critical for them to move from a waterfall methodology to agile to build products their customers genuinely needed. Brainmates, headed by Sandeep, helped them become an agile organisation, driving business outcomes with speed, surety and also progress on multiple strategic initiatives simultaneously. Formulating a robust strategy which considers all aspects of business, including key customer needs and commercial viability, keeps Sandeep happy.
Sandeep is passionate about Product Management because it’s one role that truly enables you to positively influence the future of a business or a product and make them world class. When not brainstorming strategies or cultivating Product culture, Sandeep is busy coaching his nine-year-old son to become as big of a cricket tragic as he is, or traversing Australia with his family on extended road trip adventures.
Regina Campbell
Senior Consultant and Coach
Regina is a Product Management Consultant and Coach, who is our resident efficiency expert extraordinaire. She has a knack for streamlining exceptionally complex systems, tools and processes into easy to understand and usable frameworks – paired with simple processes to keep the product growing. She is hyper-focused on the end users of Products and how to understand, empathise and solve their problems, as well as on solving the pain points of those who build the products themselves. She believes that learning is a never ending journey and that “failures” are a pivotal part of this, which is why she is continually iterating on her fast prototypes.
Regina has been (accidentally) in Product since 2004, working largely for North American big data and retail firms including Sears, IRI and Roundy’s Supermarkets. Most recently Regina built a product attribute management system to define (in immense detail) all the facets of FMCG products and the retail stores they’re sold in. She loves big data and what it’s possible to achieve with the correctly defined data set and the vision and expertise to mould it new levels of insight.
Regina spends her free time with her husband and daughter and loves seeing life through the unstoppable energy her daughter has. As a former mountain bike racer, Regina can also be found exploring the local mountain bike trails.
