Next Gen Product Management Conference 2025: A Resounding Success!
On January 16th, Technology Ireland DIGITAL Skillnet and TU Dublin, presented a unique opportunity for product leaders to challenge perspectives and learn from global product experts. The conference took place in TU Dublin, in the Concert Hall, East Quad, Grangegorman Campus on Thursday, 16th January 2025.
The event was an opportunity for product managers to learn from industry leaders about the transformative power of product operations and AI; network with peers, experts and stakeholders shaping the future of product management and engage in interactive panel discussions and Q&A sessions.
Divided into two sessions, we covered topics such as how can product operations address key challenges in product management, why is it so important we enhance collaboration in the AI era, and how to scale with customer-centricity.
Event Hosts: Technology Ireland DIGITAL Skillnet & TU Dublin Partnership
TU Dublin have developed an enduring collaboration with Technology Ireland DIGITAL Skillnet and our award-winning Product Management Postgraduate Diploma and MSc programmes have been empowering Product leaders to develop strategic thinking, solve real-world challenges, and drive innovation across enterprises for over a decade. Our innovative co-designed programmes exemplifies the successful collaboration between universities and industry partners, addressing skills demand, and creating new career pathways for learners.
University enterprise collaboration is one of the pillars of TU Dublin and partnership is embedded in our University mission. Speaking at the event, Thomas Stone, VP Partnerships at TU Dublin said:
"Our partnership emphasis and focus reflects the history and the establishment of TU Dublin. We put a huge amount of effort into engaging with organisations in terms of meeting the needs of industry of Ireland and providing accredited programmes, and up-skilling opportunities for the workplace. Our focus is to prepare our full time and part time graduates to satisfy the needs and the future needs of skills and competencies within Ireland, and further a field. The university engages in many ways with industry to find out what is it they need. We do this through internships, apprenticeships and through our Enterprise Academy. In partnerships, we learn from each other what are the programmes that are currently needed, the skills gaps and the programme content that will make our graduates better. We look ahead in terms of future skills trends and how can we actually fit into that in to our programme development and design. We are delighted today to further develop our collaborative efforts and host and facilitate the conference with our partners Technology Ireland DIGITAL Skillnet, and iBEC, the Graduate School of Business and the Enterprise Academy."
A warm welcome to TU Dublin
Opening with conference and extending a warm welcome to our guests, speakers, panellists and product leaders to TU Dublin, Dr Claire Mc Bride, Head of the Enterprise Academy and Convene Project Lead said, "Technological University Dublin is renowned for its strong industry collaboration. Our unique practice-based learning model combines academic excellence with hands-on experience to prepare learners for the workplace and help them to thrive when they get there. Together, with Technology Ireland DIGITAL Skillnet, we continue to create educational solutions that address critical and emerging skills gaps. We have developed an enduring collaboration, that started with the Postgraduate Diploma in Product Management, and have produced multiple award-winning programmes."
Addressing the audience of over 320 attendees, Una Fitzpatrick, Director of Technology Ireland at Ibec, representing Technology Ireland DIGITAL Skillnet on the importance of understanding and addressing emerging and critical skills need for the technology sector said,
“The twin pillars of Innovation and Product Management are inseparable—two sides of the same coin—both critical to driving growth, competitiveness, and sustainability, not just within our sector but across the broader economy. The technology sector in Ireland has a profound impact as you all know, and effective product and technology management are critical to that. In my ongoing conversations with member companies, one constant remains: the demand for robust product management skills and competencies is evergreen.”
"Today, I am thrilled to share an exciting new initiative. Technology Ireland is launching a Product Management Community of Practice—a dedicated knowledge and networking hub for the sector and, in particular, for our alumni, both past and future. In collaboration with TU Dublin and Technology Ireland Digital Skillnet, this community will bring together experts and thought leaders to share cutting-edge insights and best practices in product management."
Photo caption: Dr Claire Mc Bride Head of the Enterprise Academy at TU Dublin and Convene Project Lead; Thomas Stone, VP Partnerships TU Dublin; Una Fitzpatrick, Director Technology Ireland at Ibec and Dr. Colin Hughes, Head of the Graduate Business School, TU Dublin.
Leading Change in Product, through Product Operations
Author and product expert Denise Tilles, our keynote speaker presented on Leading Change in Product, through Product Operations giving key insights to the biggest challenges in product today and how product operations provide solutions that accelerate impact, help navigate change and provide customer visibility and transparency.
“The way I see it is really threefold accelerating impact. How do we get towards impact faster? How do we think about navigating change? Change can look different in so many ways: changing ways of thinking within our team, changing ways of thinking with our stakeholders, changing how we develop. And then finally, transparency and visibility. That's a big piece of how we set our strategy and how we monitor it. How do we know if it's working? So that's one of the biggest challenges today. I see it over and over.”
Outlining what product operations are, Denise explained the three pillars of product ops: business and data insights, customer and user insights, and processes and practices. She focused on how product ops can alleviate the challenges businesses are facing today. She explained how product managers can leverage an internal flow of business and data insights for product strategy decisions: simple sales and support feedback loop, a cadence for revising the strategy and transparency to provide visibility into findings to empower all teams.
Download Denise's presentation here: Leading Change in Product through Product Operations
Photo caption: Keynotes Denise Tilles and John Haggerty
Crafting World-Class Products
Guest speaker Paddy Monaghan, Chief Product Officer at Phorest, explored strategies for creating standout products during his lively presentation on crafting world-class products. He described how businesses can create a sustained competitive advantage by deeply understanding customers, developing inventive solutions with talented teams that iterate and co-create.
Paddy explained, with many interesting examples how they do this at Phorest. They make customers part of their culture, regularly talking to stakeholders to understanding their experience. And building solutions made for their problems and work to deeply understand if and how it works.
Download Paddy's presentation here: A Customer Driven Product Story. Paddy Monaghan, Phorest
Photo caption: Paddy Monaghan, CPO at Phorest
Spotlight on Innovation
Richa Pathak, Director, Product Manager from Workday showcased her approach to innovation in product management. She discussed Product Innovation from her own experiences while also leaning into some of the innovative practices at Workday and outlining the importance a few four letter words the first of which was "user" and the importance of a user-first strategy to understand:
"What are the current pain points that users are experiencing and try to drill down and understand why those pain points even exist? Through that analysis and the design process make sure that you are keeping users in the picture. Focusing on the user experience side of things. So it's not just how they are being offered that product, it's also how they interact with that product. Does it make sense to them? Is it intuitive?"
Focusing on another four letter word "Team," Richa spoke about leading in product.
"As product managers, we are in a leadership position by default, even if we don't seek it, even if we don't want to be managing a team. But, in reality, product managers are influencing the entire ecosystem, peers, and people along the chain. Including senior management because you are trying to influence and negotiate for resources and investment. You are creating decisions and trying to get buy in, to get the investment and create a road map for teams. This is not just on product managers, all the roles associated with the product will have to team together."
Download Richa's presentation here: The 4-letter word in product, Richa Pathak, Workday
Photo caption: Richa Pathak, Director, Product Manager, Workday
Interactive Discussion Panel and Q&A
Following presentations, Dr. Claire Mc Bride moderated a discussion panel with the guest speakers, Denise Tilles, Paddy Monaghan and Richa Pathak. Questions were invited from the room, and this was an opportunity for attendees to engage with speakers to dive deeper into the morning sessions.
Speakers were asked to respond to questions such as: Product Operations sounds like an interesting product management path. What have you seen with people making the transition into it or starting out at an entry level role? What are the common signs or company size that indicates the need for Product Operations? Can you share the worst business decisions you've ever made and the impact it had, and the costs and the lessons learned? Where you go for inspiration to find ways to address anticipated future customer need and solve problems in future-focused ways? As very senior people in product management positions what's the most important career decision you made that helped you get where you are today?
Addressing the question, How do you see the role of Engineering in product management should they be customer facing and part of the feedback loop for the product they are developing? Paddy Monaghan responded,
“Engineers need to understand the problem we're solving. It may even be a Marty Cagan saying, where if they hear about the solution for the first time in a backlog, you've lost about 50% of the value of an engineer. Some of the best solutions we develop come from engineering. They need to be involved early, and ideally be on every team. If you don't have at least one engineer who's interested in digging in and can lead the rest of the team, you probably won't get as good a solution.”
Photo caption: Dr Claire Mc Bride, Head of the Enterprise Academy.
Session 2
After the networking break, Dr. Colin Hughes, Head of the Graduate Business School at TU Dublin opened the second session on AI in Product which included our second keynote speaker and TU Dublin Product Management Alumni Panel Discussion.
When introducing keynote, speaker John Haggerty, AI & Data Product Leader, Dr Hughes acknowledged,
“AI is something that's already having a such a transformational impact on our organizations and indeed our lives. We've heard all our speakers mention AI this morning. Unsurprisingly, it's also reshaping a lot of our programmes or all of our programmes in business in TU Dublin and most notably our product Management portfolio.”
Stakeholder Collaboration in the Age of AI - Enhancing Trust and Transparency
During his keynote presentation, Stakeholder Collaboration in the Age of AI - Enhancing Trust and Transparency, John unpacked the fundamentals of Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), and their impact on product management and explained how ccollaboration and transparency are the cornerstones of AI success.
“AI isn't just a fancy technology or a buzzword for earning because it touches all our businesses. In some way, some facet, the tentacles of AI are far and wide reaching. It involves everything from data science to marketing; product development to the leadership teams. That is why collaboration is so important. We need to be able to bring together these diverse sets of opinions, viewpoints, world views together really generate and create AI solutions that work for the broader organization. If we don't do that, we risk misalignment, we risk inefficiencies. We even risk complete failure, just from the buy in of our stakeholders. This is why it's so important to be able to map and understand who your stakeholders are.”
“Throughout my career I have seen firsthand the value of stakeholder collaboration when it comes to AI products. It is so important to know who your internal users are across the organization. As a product leader, the product that you are delivering is twofold. One is your communication; how you're rolling things out, what you're telling them; and two, is your team. The product managers are your product. Are they fit for service? Are they solving the problems that your users have around the organization?”
Download John's presentation here: Stakeholder Collaboration in the Age of AI, John Haggerty
Alumni Panel Discussion: The Future of Product Management
What do this panel of senior product leaders all have in common? They are all graduates of the Postgraduate Diploma in Product Management at TU Dublin. The discussion Next-Gen Product Management: Opportunities and Challenges."
Liam Cronin, CEO of RDI Hub and Product Management Alum, led the discussion with former classmates Mossy O’Mahony, VP Product at Teamwork.com; Bevan Callaghan, Director of Product Operations Mastercard; and Ita O'Sullivan, Principal Product Manager, Vertex.
The alumni panellists were able to show how they had leveraged their learnings to helped their careers, to educate others and share frameworks for how to approach product management practise on a day-to-day basis.
The discussion evolved around questions put to them from the audience, such as: Product Ops can feel like bureaucracy, how do you get engagement on the processes you are driving? Who gets the most value out of Product Ops: is it customers, management, the Product team and Product Managers or some other group of stakeholders? What are the differences in product teams between startups and multinational corporations and what are the implications for the Product Management?
Photo Caption: Liam Cronin, CEO of RDI Hub, Bevan Callaghan, Director of Product Operations Mastercard; Bevan Callaghan, Director of Product Operations Mastercard; Ita O'Sullivan, Principal Product Manager, Vertex and Mossy O’Mahony, VP Product at Teamwork.com
Responding to a question from the audience about the challenges of big data and AI in Product, Bevan Callaghan said:
"So seeing quite a few of the different product management platforms out there are introducing AI into their features. They are largely doing initial groundwork of getting product release or product description documents written, framing concepts as well as then taking steps to engage and do the analysis. And if there is data available, AI can pull through and possibly reflect what direction we might go on a product. AI is a is a great tool to be the calculator. To take us a step further and allow the data analysis to be done faster and quicker. It is enabling product managers to focus on the strategic work and be less about the kind of growing functions that they need to do. It allows people to avoid having to spend a lot of time or build up a lot of expertise in a particular with a big data queries. Some of the research and analysis skills and some of that we can outsource to today.
I would caution though, that you don't want to fully outsource the strategic product management analysis that you need to do to gain important insights, aggregate needs, and latent needs that we're looking for to understand what is the next product that a customer will need. If you go too far down that AI track you perhaps then lose sight of that ability to be the strategic value person and a business that has that representation of the voice of the customer, as well as understanding the stakeholders and the constraints of the product for the vision and the domain."
Networking Opportunities
Attendees had the opportunity to network with peers, experts and stakeholders shaping the future of product management in interactive panel discussions and Q&A sessions. Networking breaks allowed guests to connect with like-minded peers, industry experts, and stakeholders over a relaxed lunch to exchange ideas about the exciting future of product management.
It was a day of rich, valuable insights, strategic discussions, learning opportunities, and meaningful connections. The passion for innovation within Ireland’s Product community is truly impressive.
Postgraduate Diploma and MSc In Product Management programmes
For those Interested in furthering their career as a Product Manager, there was an opportunity to sign up for the Postgraduate Diploma and MSc In Product Management programmes. These award-winning programmes from TU Dublin are designed to elevate your strategic product skills, equipping you with the tools, insights, and expertise to lead innovation and thrive in the ever-evolving world of product management. TU Dublin is delighted to offer a scholarship opportunity for the Postgraduate Diploma in Product Management, funded by the Enterprise Academy, TU Dublin.
The Postgraduate Diploma and MSc in Product Management offers a blend of classroom instruction and immersive learning experience, like, solving real-world challenges for your company, live case studies, dynamic group exercises, and collaborating with peers from diverse industries. Through the programme, you will develop strategic thinking, build networks, and complete hands-on projects that will reshape your skills and approach to product management delivering a tangible return on investment for participating companies.
https://www.digitalskillnet.ie/productmanagement/
About TU Dublin Enterprise Academy
The Enterprise Academy is a multidisciplinary business unit adopting an innovative approach to Collaborative Talent Development for workplace learners, while also facilitating connections with on-campus learners. Launched in November 2022, it is designed to support Irish-based enterprises in their talent development and skills strategies.
The Enterprise Academy at TU Dublin aims to build and grow active partnerships across academia, industry, community and society, to create value and impact for the TU Dublin community and wider society. As such, it will support the University in achieving its aim to increase active partnerships by 10% and to grow diversified income to 30% of total income by 2028. 