With an impressive background in computer science from MIT and years of experience as a site reliability engineer at Google, Dina Levitan shares how she approaches the art of problem definition, and what she’s learned about the value of subject matter expertise versus disciplined product management skills. The episode also touches on Dina’s passion for consulting, her thoughts on work-life integration as a mom and leader, and practical stories about rapidly ramping up in new industries without being a deep domain expert.
Key takeaways from Holly’s conversation with Dina Levitan, founder and principal of Chill Labs and lead product consultant at the Product Science Group, include the importance of centering the human experience in product development, the power of diverse and empowered teams, and why evidence-based strategies can unlock innovation, even in unfamiliar territory.
Resources
Visit Chill Labs where Dina helps companies build products that users want and do so in a way that supports growth and scale.
Explore Dina’s personal site to explore her consulting and speaking services.
Connect with Dina on LinkedIn
Sign up for the “Automate Yourself” Newsletter at newsletter.chillaborate.com.
Visit the Product Science Group website
Explore Product Science Workshops and Courses
Quotes from Dina Levitan:
(00:01:31) “One of the questions I ask myself when I’m working on a product problem is how can I systematize the best practices and the issues that we’re seeing here so that we can remove that problem and never have it happen again. That’s one of those SRE principles that I like to keep top of mind...”
(00:05:21) “Whether it’s in engineering or product management or life generally, understanding the true nature of a problem and its root causes is one of the most interesting and exciting pieces of the puzzle for me and motivates me to do my best work.” - Dina Levitan
(00:16:13) “I know that for me, one of the more fun aspects of the job is facilitating workshops and seeing how ideas from each participant build on top of each other and help us get to a clear path forward.” - Dina Levitan
Lab Notes
Lab Note 608.1: Continuous Discovery & Delivery: Centering the human is key.
(00:27:09) “They followed the user journey as a query went through the different points of their system, and that one of the main things they were focusing on was how to keep that consistent customer experience and have a great customer experience consistently through all of those points.” - Mark Enache
Lab Note 608.2: Empowered Teams: Teams with diverse skillsets and perspectives foster greater understanding.
(00:28:04) “Being naturally and natively who you are in a business situation can help foster and develop just a greater understanding of what’s actually being said...” - John Haggerty
Lab Note 606.3: Evidence-Based Product Strategy: Gathering evidence leads to sound product strategy even in areas where pre-existing expertise is limited.
(00:29:05) “The energy of saying, you know, if you don’t have a pm, that’s a subject matter expert in this they’re doomed to fail. It’s very similar type of energy to saying, you know, we don’t need to gather evidence.” - Mark Enache
Lab Note 606.4: Building empowered teams requires both science and art.
(00:29:59) “When our clients are asking us to come in and help them introduce evidence-based product strategy, or indeed any company wants to introduce and uplevel a new type of product strategy, that is innovation.” - Mark Enache
Lab Note 606.5: Empathy and contextual understanding remain uniquely human.
(00:30:57) “Will the roles change? Yes, absolutely. They’ll change and evolve. That’s why knowing how AI works, getting ahead of it, understanding it and figuring out how you want to bring it into your role today is a very powerful way to go about it.” - John Haggerty
