Product in Practice: Creating Opportunities for Deliberate Practice at BBC Maestro

Lily Smith, Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, describes how she set out to add deliberate practice to product learning after realizing that reading and talks were not enough to change how she and her peers work. Working mostly in startups as the sole product person, she lacked a place to rehearse new skills with others. She first tested a condensed design sprint with a friend, then created ProductPlay sessions where small groups practice customer interviews and opportunity solution trees together. The piece shows that practicing a framework with feedback is very different from simply reading about it, and that these low-stakes formats can help product people learn from each other.

01Key takeaways

• Reading about a framework is not the same as practicing it; participants benefit from walking through it hands-on, ideally with feedback.
• Product people who work alone or in small teams can build skills by practicing with peers outside their own company.
• Repeating a practice run helps build confidence, as the early design sprint trial showed.
• Set clear ground rules, such as treating feedback as a gift and accepting that mistakes are part of learning, to create a safe environment.
• Keep sessions focused and realistic on time; Lily found a 90-minute slot too ambitious for the full agenda.
• Expect uneven familiarity across a group and make room for newcomers, as the mixed-group session showed.

02Key sections

Why inspiration rarely becomes action

The article opens by noting the gap between feeling inspired by product writing and actually changing behavior. It frames the Product in Practice series as a way to show real teams taking steps toward the same goal.

Lily's background and learning gap

Lily describes her role leading product, design, research, and data at BBC Maestro and her years of self-directed learning. She explains that small-team and startup work left her without peers to practice with.

Testing a condensed design sprint

Before creating a larger format, Lily ran a one-day compressed design sprint with a friend to build confidence in the process. The trial showed value but also suggested that repetition would help even more.

Designing and running ProductPlay

Lily created ProductPlay sessions with ground rules, timed agendas, and rotating roles for interviewing and feedback. The first session covered interviews and opportunity solution trees using a home plastic-waste topic, and the second session with a larger, mixed group revealed new challenges.

Lessons and next steps

Participants asked for training before practice, which led Lily to conclude that reading about a framework and applying it are different. She plans to repeat the format and build a resource library so others can run their own sessions.

03From the post

“How often have you read a book or article and been inspired to take action on it? And how often have you actually taken action on it? Chances are there’s a big gap between how inspired you feel and which concrete actions you end up taking. If that’s”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.