Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Opening Keynote: Breaking Conway's Law--or How to Work Differently and Not Ship Your Org Chart
Gold
Monday, June 3, 2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Share the love for this talk
Opening Keynote: Breaking Conway's Law--or How to Work Differently and Not Ship Your Org Chart
Speakers: Tatyana Mamut
Link:

Summary

If doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, most enterprise product teams are insane. In today’s world, shipping truly innovative, customer-obsessed experiences means that we must break down silos and collaborate in new ways. In this talk, Head of Product (CPO) at Nextdoor, Tatyana Mamut, PhD–who also led multi-functional product teams at Amazon, Salesforce, and IDEO–draws upon experiences at enterprise companies that managed to break Conway’s Law and ship innovative product experiences by working across silos and functions.

Key Insights

  • Conway's Law means products often unintentionally reflect organizational silos, making collaboration across functions difficult.

  • All internal stakeholders can be right in their perspectives, but without shared customer focus, conflicts arise.

  • Customer obsession must be prioritized over revenue, competitors, technology, or business models to align organizations.

  • Leaders like CPOs and CEOs should spend regular, agenda-free time directly with customers to build empathy.

  • Real customer field research uncovers nuanced needs that proxies like surveys, sales feedback, or fictional personas miss.

  • Fictional personas dilute real customer complexity; using actual customer stories and photos is more effective.

  • Reframing product design around actual customer workflows—e.g., salespeople writing emails and holding meetings—can rapidly improve products.

  • Early, low-fidelity prototyping like sketches encourages honest, democratic feedback from customers.

  • Customer value drivers must dictate prioritization and metrics, as seen at Amazon (price, speed, selection) and Intuit (money, no work, confidence).

  • Aligning OKRs and dashboards to mission-driven customer metrics ensures product teams remain accountable to real user outcomes rather than shareholders alone.

Notable Quotes

"The products that you ship are direct reflections of your organizational processes and communication structures."

"Everyone has a different perspective and partial knowledge, and all are right—but that creates silos."

"Customer obsession instead of competitor obsession or technology obsession must be really clear across teams."

"Having your CEO and CPO spend two days a month in the field with customers without any agenda is critical."

"Sales objections are not customer insights; they serve different purposes and must be treated separately."

"Pipetting at a biology bench gives empathy no survey or photo can provide."

"Don’t make up fictional personas; use real people’s names, photos, and stories to capture real customer complexity."

"Showing sketches to customers early encourages them to redraw and better express their needs."

"If our employees are happy, they will take care of our customers—and shareholders will be just fine."

"Are we truly a customer-first company, or a shareholder-first company? That shows up in what we measure."

Ask the Rosenbot
Elana Chapman
Getting started with accessibility research
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Chris Chapo
Data Science and Design: A Tale of Two Tribes
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Tony Turner
Capturing Deep Insights
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
George Hinchliffe
Delivering Amazing Experiences
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Greg Petroff
Everything is About to Change: Software as Material
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Michal Anne Rogondino
Saving Outer Space: The First UX Design System for Our Nation’s Satellites
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Daniel Korczynski
Why AI Is Bad at Research (and how to make it actually useful)
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Conference
Victor Udoewa
Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Catt Small
Moving from Execution to Strategy as a Designer
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Phil Hesketh
Designing Accessible Research Workflows
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Meghan Hellstern
The Next 100 Years of Civic Design: How Might We Better Rise to Meet the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow?
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Mariah Hay
Ethics in Tech Education: Designing to Provide Opportunity for All
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Weidan Li
Qualitative synthesis with ChatGPT: Better or worse than human intelligence?
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Marieke McCloskey
User Science: Product Analytics & User Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Lin Nie
When Thought-worlds Collide: Collaborating Between Research and Practice
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Kathleen Asjes
Research Democratization: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold

More Videos

Christian Bason

"Civic design lets us nuance the full range of citizens’ behavior, which often isn’t purely rational."

Christian Bason

Innovating With People: Unleashing the Potential of Civic Design

December 8, 2021

Shazia Ali

"If you take the audience on the journey right from the beginning, it becomes more of a conversation."

Shazia Ali Bruce Gillespie Joyce Lee Andy Warr

Communication: Innovative techniques for making your voice heard [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]

August 21, 2024

Nick Cochran

"Don’t make the spotlight about yourself; give it back to the people doing great work in your organization."

Nick Cochran

Growing in Enterprise Design through Making Connections

June 3, 2019

Jim Kalbach

"Instead of playing the melody Miles Davis wrote, the soloist creates a melody spontaneously."

Jim Kalbach

Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration

June 4, 2019

Joseph Meersman

"There is no formula for good critiques, but mindset is behavior over time: humility, active listening, gratitude, owning blind spots, and acknowledgment."

Joseph Meersman

Sweating the Pixel: Scaling Quality through Critique

June 10, 2021

Dan Ward

"We do experiments not to make things work but to learn something new."

Dan Ward

Failure Friday #1 with Dan Ward

February 7, 2025

Clara Kliman-Silver

"AI is valuable in design when it extrapolates away mundane work."

Clara Kliman-Silver

UX Futures: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Design

June 7, 2023

Patrick Boehler

"The biggest shift is the power moving from supply side to demand side in media."

Patrick Boehler Madison Karas

The service shift: transforming media organizations to create real value through design

November 19, 2025

Deanna Smith

"Anecdotal feedback from team members helps leaders understand the real impact of change."

Deanna Smith

Leading Change with Confidence: Strategies for Optimizing Your Process

September 23, 2024