The Product Awards Build categories are lucky to have Christina Lucey in charge. Here’s what she had to say about her category:
Why did this category speak to you?
You’ll want to honor the best products for the Build stage of the product lifecycle too after you read the way Lucey speaks about it.
“The build phase is when everything becomes real. This is where a product precipitates out from all the ideas floating around in the ether. How you execute, what you execute, and the decisions you make along the way can literally kill your product or be the thing that helps it win.
There is so much art and skill required to build as a product manager. You’re required to keep one eye on the future as the architecture emerges while keeping the other eye on the details of the present experience. Uncovering and negotiating constraints, being flexible and knowing when to revisit decisions you may have already made. Orchestrating the flow of a multi-disciplinary team and making a vision come to life.
Let’s not forget the building job of a product leader: building your team. Building great products at scale requires the talents of a diverse group of product managers. This is a deep topic in and of itself.”
What characteristics must a product have to be award-worthy for this category?
On Product Talk, Lucey discussed the Product Awards and her stage of the product lifecycle, Build, if you’re interested in hearing more.
“What’s unique about the build phase is this is where the complexity really starts to show up, in multiple facets (the project, people, technology, etc). Any product that’s going to be a contender for the Build category needs to equip the product manager with the ability to dig into the complexity, but also abstract it to allow them to see the bigger picture.
An award-worthy tool also needs to strike the right balance between being so configurable it’s unopinionated and so paternalistic it doesn’t allow teams to work in their own way.”
What product deserves a lifetime achievement award for this category?
Not sure what could be a better testament to a product than a bride using a tool to plan her own wedding.
“Trello! Since it’s launch, I’ve never PM’d anything without it – including my own wedding. It’s inherently simple, principled (but not paternalistic) about its use, and fits teams of all shapes and sizes. I think a great part of its success is because its form is derived from IRL (in real life) artifacts. Its ways of working and the use of technology are additive rather than requiring its users to abandon what comes naturally to them.
As work increasingly happens across geographies and allows flexibility for people’s space and time, it’s critical to mention that Trello is great for enabling collaboration that is multi-location and/or asynchronous.”
And without further adieu, the Nominees for the Product Awards Design categories are…
There are four categories that make up the Build stage of the product lifecycle. They are:
- Execute Ideas: assess how you’re doing against your plan, decide whether to make adjustments, communicate, and document the new plan.
- Create it Yourself: These days engineers aren’t the only builders, tools where PMs are implementing part of the experience themselves.
- Build Teams: sourcing, connecting, assessing, closing and growing your team.
- Establish Culture: establishing norms and process and ensuring your team has all the tools and knowledge to succeed in your organization.
These are the Product Awards nominees for each category:
- Execute Ideas
- Jira
- Zenhub
- AirTable
- Trello
- Pivotal Tracker
- InstaGantt
- Monday.com
- Asana
- Notion
- Google Docs
- Basecamp
- Wrike
- Roadmunk
- ClickUp
- Smartsheet
- Delibr
- Range
- Create it Yourself
- Betty Blocks
- Draftbit
- Webflow
- Braze
- Optimizely
- Clearbit
- Qordoba
- Zapier
- Intercom
- AskNicely
- Makerpad
- Adalo
- Delighted
- Pendo
- Twilio
- Build Teams
- Lever
- Hired
- Andela
- Greenhouse
- Workday
- Fetcher
- SeekOut
- Bumble Bizz
- AngelList
- Crunchbase
- Meetup
- Entelo
- Vettery
- HiringSolved
- Qwalify
- Establish Culture
- CultureAmp
- Typeform
- 15Five
- Bonusly
- CultureIQ
- Kanjoya
- Qualitrics
- SpeakUp
- BriqCAp
- Looop
- Fond
- Tallyfy
- Lattice
- BetterUp
- Yammer
- Emplify
- Peakon
- TinyPulse
We offer our congratulations to all of the nominees for this year in the Build categories. Likewise, good luck to each and every amazing product that has been nominated. Certainly, a very special thanks to Christina Lucey for being the head of the Build stage on the Awards Advisory Board.
Meanwhile, you can vote for your favorites to win! Click here to vote for the products you believe should win for each category.
Lastly, did we miss any of your favorite tools for building products? Please, let us know in the comments. Most importantly, perhaps they’ll be on the nominee list for next year!
About the speaker
Christina is a product leader with a passion for crafting. After six internships and four years studying computer science at the University of Waterloo, she found product management. After a few years of building a foundation in execution, she launched her first product at BlackBerry in 2011. Since then she been hooked on crafting new digital things ever since. Her efforts on growth and mobile helped propel Yammer towards acquisition. Following that, Christina headed up product at early stage companies twice. Currently she’s at Credit Karma where she is the leader for new product initiatives. When she’s not crafting products or podcasting, you can find her reading, cooking, working on her fitness, or channeling her inner Martha Stewart.