Bettina Shzu-Juraschek

Product Manager at Babbel

Bettina Shzu-Juraschek is a Texan product manager and hobby programmer living in Berlin since 2008. She’s currently working with Babbel to help their users learn foreign languages better. Previously, she grew the revenue over 20% year over year for a mature product at ImmoScout, and she also co-organized the first ClojureBridge workshop in Berlin. Currently, she is also mentoring women who want to transition to tech careers.

How to Recover from a Hard Pivot

Apr 15, 2020

During the product lifecycle, if your product has been successful enough to mature over years, there comes a time when a product manager confronts the question of the rewrite. What happens if you decide to rewrite and then decide not to rewrite?
When the entire product pivots, as a product manager, how do you decide what problems are the most important to solve from this seemingly blank slate? How might the team setup change? How might the product development process change? What kind of new roles might be needed?
In this case study, I’ll talk about why and how Babbel pivoted from launching a new product to delivering value through its current product as well as lessons learned along the way.
After this talk, you will leave knowing how to recover from hard pivots through evolutionary change, transparency, and…eclairs.