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Mike van der Valk and Brenda Uga

Pipedrive

Mike van der Valk, Senior Product Manager at Pipedrive

Mike van der Valk is a Senior Product Manager at Pipedrive, responsible for leading product development from conception to completion. He joined the company 7 years ago, starting his career in customer support. After 1.5 years as a customer solutions expert, he developed the company’s first training program for new customer support reps and helped create a learning base for Pipedrive’s clients. 4 years ago, he joined the product organization to help build new products and currently leads a team that is launching Projects, the latest addition to Pipedrive’s product suite. Mike earned his Bachelor of Commercial Economics from Hogeschool Rotterdam.

Brenda Uga, Senior Product Designer at Pipedrive

Brenda Uga joined Pipedrive 4 years ago as an intern. As she got more acquainted with her role and responsibilities, Brenda became increasingly involved with different projects and has kept professionally growing ever since. Today she works as a Senior Product Designer and her responsibilities include leading design projects by breaking down and solving highly complex challenges, taking input from various stakeholders, and creating design prototypes and visual assets. Brenda has a background in engineering and briefly worked as a front-end developer before finding her passion in UI/UX design. Currently, she is working on Pipedrive Projects, the latest tool in the company’s product suite. She is passionate about designing for machine learning and AI, making use of algorithms to create digital art, and developing her leadership skills.

Talk

5 lessons learned about healthy collaboration between product, design, and engineering

What makes an effective collaboration? While it seems that teamwork is key to success, it’s the collaboration skills that actually make a team work. From ideation to careful planning to executing the project brilliantly, each step of the process relies heavily on open communication and consistency in the team.

In this talk, Mike van der Valk, Brenda Uga and Kadi Laidoja will share their formula for success and how not to fall into the trap of miscommunication. Based on their experience working together on Projects, the latest addition to Pipedrive’s product suite, they will deep dive into critical factors that made their collaboration healthy and successful.

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