Key Takeaways from NPA Board Member Upasna Gautam’s WAN-IFRA LATAM Keynote

On May 16th, Upasna Gautam, NPA Board Member and Senior Product Manager for Digital News Platforms at CNN, gave a keynote talk at Digital Media LATAM 2023, organized by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). 

Her talk focused on aligning Audience Needs, Engagement, and UX and was moderated by Diego Carvajal, Chief Digital Officer at N+. The session proved to be an enlightening exploration of effective editorial, technical, and business strategies in the realm of digital news publishing. 

In an industry that often struggles to balance user experience with financial sustainability, Gautam's insights on the panel into creating products that resonated with audience needs, were highly engaging, and could be effectively monetized, were eagerly received. She delved into the intricacies of product development within newsrooms, sharing successful strategies from CNN, potential pitfalls, and practical advice on how to adopt and adapt these processes for one's own newsroom.

For our NPA community’s benefit, Upasna has included her presentation slides here along with a summary of her key talking points below.

Summary:

✨Platform Product Management in News:

Platform Product Managers (PMs) are responsible for prioritizing & supporting the work of multiple consumer-facing products and providing a cohesive vision across the organization. 

Platform PMs:

• Function across product lines by impacting multiple products that live on the platform (CMS, mobile apps, video, etc)

• Oversee an expansive user base & their product is used by many internal and external teams and customers

• Build highly technical products, which requires consistent engagement with developer stakeholders and management of complicated technical requirements like APIs (and other components)
  

✨3 Key Objectives in Platform Product Management:

• Rock Solid QA: In a platform world, code bugs aren’t irritants that can be easily fixed by a quick push to production, but problems that break the fundamental systems upon which your products are built. QA, aka quality assurance, is a systematic process of determining whether a product meets the specified requirements. Platform PM’s find creative ways to lead QA to best regression test products to suss out bugs.

• Aim for the long view: The day-to-day experience of being a Platform PM can feel like walking a marathon. Unlike in a solutions product role in which products are iterated on & shipped constantly, platform products require longer release cycles, which means careful management of user expectations and timelines.

• Regular evaluation of priorities: Platform product managers have so many stakeholders & users that a reassessment of priorities needs to happen much more often than in a solutions-based product world. Platform PMs must remain open to continue running through detail after detail with stakeholders & users so that they support them in their day-to-day use of the product, and understand their long-term needs.

Upasna shared how she and her team built and launched CNN's core digital platform by walking the audience through the product development lifecycle.

✨The Core User Problem:

Far too often, newsrooms have to adapt to their content management tools, platforms, and systems because the technology, workflows, and features are set in stone. This poses great limitations and restrictions on journalists and editors, as they are forced to find workarounds to meet their needs.

✨Our Solution:

Build a first-rate, web-based system that will manage, publish and distribute CNN’s digital content. This system is modular and intuitive, thus empowering journalists and product teams with technology that drives the future of essential, sustainable, and facts-first storytelling. A system that can keep up with and perform at the speed of breaking news.

✨Our Goals:

Speed: Rapid development & testing
Flexibility: Modular components (front & back end)
Monetization: Integration of revenue driving elements
Empowerment: Give journalists complete control of their workflows

✨Key Takeaways:

• Most important starting point is identifying the key problems to solve

• Develop an order of operations

• Ensure that Editorial and Product are in lock-step throughout the product development cycle

• Flexible on the process but firm on the goals

Resources: Upasna’s presentation deck

Photos:

Credit: WAN-IFRA LATAM