Bio
Melissa Perri is a product management educator, author, speaker, and board advisor. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, teaching Product Management to second year MBA students.
Melissa created two online schools: Product Institute, where she has shared her scientific approach to Product Management with over 3500 students, and CPO Accelerator, which specializes in growing product leaders into Chief Product Officers.
Seeing an opportunity to help executives understand the value of Product Management, Melissa published “Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value” with O’Reilly Media. In 2014, she wrote the Product Management curriculum for General Assembly’s part time Product Management course, which is still used worldwide today.
Melissa is a board member of Forsta, the leading market research and customer insights platform. In the past, Melissa has consulted with executives around the world to set up their product organizations, advise on product strategy, and train leaders and team members. Her clients include Capital One, Lloyds Bank of England, Spotify, Liberty Mutual, Bynder, AthenaHealth, the Australian Defence Department, and Chewy. Prior to her current position, Melissa was a Product Manager and UX Designer at Capital IQ, Barclays Capital, OpenSky, and Conductor.
Melissa is a highly sought after keynote speaker, having addressed audiences in over 35 countries. Past conferences include Mind the Product, Productized, Industry Conference, Agile Australia, Agile 2017, Lean UX NYC, Lean Agile Scotland, and QCon. In 2017 she was voted Best Product Person by The Product Group, a peer review award that received thousands of nominees worldwide.
Where To Find Melissa
Produx Labs
Produx Labs consults with companies both large and small to help implement great Product Management. They specialize in scaling product teams, finding the right CPOs/VPs to lead, and implementing best practices in product strategy, product operations, and org design.
Product Institute
Melissa developed Product Institute as a way to teach Product Managers how to think in the most effective way possible. This online course contains direction on validating product ideas and building the right thing. Product Institute can also help scale trainings to larger companies.
CPO Accelerator
CPO Accelerator is a one-of-a-kind training program focused solely on executive product leadership. The course instructors and mentors are experts who guide experienced product leaders through transitions with informative online lectures, webinars, and lively discussion sessions. They build connections with a group of product leaders in similar stages of their careers, and navigate this exciting step together.
Escaping the Build Trap
Melissa is the author of “Escaping the Build Trap”. This book provides a toolbox of product management principles that can be applied to any company, big or small. By understanding the secrets to communicating and collaborating within a company structure, you’ll learn how to overcome product development roadblocks and how to build products that benefit both your business and your customer.
Product Thinking Podcast
The Product Thinking Podcast is where Melissa connects with industry leading experts in the product management space, and answers pressing questions about everything product. Join them each week to level up your skillset and invest in yourself as a product leader.
Melissa Perri + Dragonboat
Dragonboat Board Advisor
Melissa joined Dragonboat’s Board of Advisors in February 2022 to bring portfolio management to outcome-focused CPOs and their teams.
“One trend I’m seeing is the need for great product management to drive business success in organizations. For that to succeed, we need to align goals and measure outcomes at both the team and exec levels. Dragonboat’s portfolio planning tool fills this gap, allowing executives and team members to see that level of insight and adjust allocation and priorities responsively. Dragonboat is the best tool I’ve seen that connects the moving pieces from the exec to feature teams level, tying work back to goals and outcomes.”
–Melissa Perri
Outcome-Driven Product Management
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