Building Great Products With Christina Lucey of Credit Karma

Introduction

Christina Lucey is in the guest’s seat after recently interviewing fellow Product Awards Advisory Board member and Product host, Anthony Atlas.

Christina works at Credit Karma where she leverages the early-stage experience to build new product brands. As an Awards Advisory Board member, she is responsible for the Build Category. 

During her Product Talk interview, Christina discussed the Product Awards, what got her hooked and also what makes a great product. 

Why the Product Awards Are Important To You 

I think the awards are an interesting way to unpack the mechanics of product management while recognizing the tools that empower that work.

What I like about the awards is that it’s an exposition about the role of the product manager—how we work—and how broad and diverse the role is.

The awards also are a great chance to examine the perspective of the people who are building these products that serve the community of product managers.

Getting Involved as an Awards Advisory Board Member

I think it’s a great chance to lend my perspective to shape what it takes to build a great product.

I’d love for the output of the awards to serve as a definitive resource for product managers and also celebrate the amazing work that the product community does. 

Role on the Awards Advisory Board

The Awards Advisory Board is made up of different members and we each focus on a different phase of the product development life-cycle.

The phase that I’m focused on is building—basically what it takes to execute.

I think if you step back to take a look at the role of product manager and a product leader, there’s a lot of different aspects to that.

Part of it is the work of building, working with a team, and maybe some of the execution project-management aspects of the job—how you manage your features.

Possibly also, what are the things that product managers build themselves as a part of that process of delivery? And then I think that from the leadership aspect, it would be amiss not to consider the other part of building, which is constructing your team and developing its culture.

What Problem Are These Tools Trying To Solve For Product Managers?

Executing ideas: Maybe it’s just something that I’ve had beat into me by managers of the past, but I think if you want to succeed in building new products, you need to be fast. A big part of that is being efficient and aware of the resources that you’re using.

Create it yourself: This category is about what are the thing product managers are building themselves? I would say that these days that engineers aren’t the only ones who are building. 

Build teams: What does it take to source, to connect with candidates, the assessment, hiring people, and simply growing your team. 

Establishing culture: Team-building doesn’t end at bringing the person on board. It’s equally important to manage and build your team culture.