Do you see situations like these in your development team? 🧐

* 📝 Product Manager and devs **talking only through tickets** and not understanding each other's perspectives.
* 🚩 Prioritisation between features and technical debt becoming an **us vs. them** dynamic.
* 📆 Product pushing for lower estimations leading to dev teams padding them deliberately, while **deadlines still get missed.**

Rest assured, you are not the only one! Building a great product requires **great collaboration between product people and engineers**, but so often, that is not the case and the two sides find themselves at odds with one another.

But it does not have to be this way - especially as AI is increasingly blurring the lines between these roles and making the Product and Engineering partnership **the ultimate competitive advantage.**

For our next ProductTank Slovenia, we’re ditching the long slide decks for something much more practical. We will be joined by **Denis Čahuk**, an engineering leadership coach who specializes in the "human" side of tech teams. We’ll be exploring the often-misunderstood dynamics between Product Managers and Engineers, but not just as a typical "sit and listen" event. **We want you to be a part of it!**

**Agenda for the evening:**
17:45 - doors open
18:05 - organizers say hello
18:10 - **Interview with Denis on Broken Team Dynamics**
Common patterns behind broken team dynamics: what to look for and how to nurture improvement. Interview by Marko Jukić (ProductTank, IKEA).
18:40 - **Team Blindspot Check — Got a question?**
We’re hosting several interactive rounds where you in the audience will bring a real challenge to the floor. Denis and the community will help you find answers to your unique situation.
19:30 - Networking and refreshments

Whether you are a seasoned PM, a Lead Dev or just starting out, join us! The best teams aren't the ones without friction, they're the ones who **learned to work through it.** Come with a question, a challenge, or just an open mind.

This time our hosts will be the wonderful people of **Kaldi** 🐐, a Slovenian company building digital products from discovery to scale.

Grab your spot and we'll see you there!

ProductTank Slovenia

Marko Jukić

Blaž Košenina

Goran Ivašić

Uros Cadez

Mitja Gornik

Nina

Alen Kovač

Črt Mrzlikar

Jure Repnik

Uros

Filip Koprivec

klemenp

Katja Galin

Matej Hočevar

Matjaž Ravnikar

Sašo Vučič

Wiktor

Rizalina Mingazheva

Debug the Divide between Product & Engineering

Kaldi

We’ll dive into how Product Management is evolving in the AI era, and how technical debt can be managed strategically.

First, Anna Szell (Product Manager at PostHog) will talk about the AI adoption: how roles are changing, where decision-making sits, and how to build teams that can ship with speed and clarity in an AI-shaped world.

​Then, Nilan Peiris (CPO at Wise) will talk about winning in high-growth environments by rethinking legacy constraints. He reframes technical debt as a strategic capital allocation decision—not a code quality flaw—and shows how to measure the tradeoff between legacy drag and speed-to-market. Learn when to intentionally take on debt to capture market share, how to empower teams without formal authority, and how to balance compliance with bold growth bets—leaving with a playbook to turn technical constraints into competitive advantage.
​Schedule:

* ​18:00-18:30 - Arrival + Intro by Gergő Horányi (Wise)
* ​18:30-19:00 - Anna Szell (Product Manager at PostHog) -- **Product Management in the AI era**
* ​19:00-19:30 - Nilan Peiris (CPO at Wise) — **Technical Debt as a High-Yield Strategic Lever**
* ​19:30-21:00 - Drinks, Pizza, Networking

​About the speakers
**[Anna Szell](https://hu.linkedin.com/in/annaszell) (Product Manager) @ PostHog**
​Anna Szell is a Product Manager at PostHog. She brings a growth focus and product analytics-first lens to modern PM. Previously she worked at Craft Docs, Shapr3D and Skyscanner.
​
**[Nilan Peiris](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilanpeiris/) (Chief Product Officer) @ Wise**
​Nilan Peiris is the Chief Product Officer at Wise, where he oversees product strategy to help the company scale and achieve its mission. He joined the organization in 2014 as VP Growth, playing a key role in its expansion after having already supported Wise’s journey as an advisor since 2012. His work focuses on building global platforms that solve complex financial problems for international customers. Prior to Wise, Nilan served as VP Growth at HouseTrip, where he was in charge of scaling the company’s presence across the European market. He also held the role of Chief Marketing Technology Officer at Holiday Extras, leading all areas of technology, marketing, and customer acquisition .Beyond his executive roles, he advises a number of early-stage startups on growth strategies and gaining market traction.

ProductTank Budapest

Biás Csongor

Andrea Sipos

Zsolt Tagányi

Orsolya Meckl

Juan Sebastián Forero Romero

Ava Soltani

Éva Bakos

Sam Niddam

Sipos Róbert

Tamás Szenes-Suba

Kindrusz László

Marcell Balogh

Zsofia Lelner

Sz János 

Erika Lécz

Farkas Norbert

Reka

Andrey  I.

Aron Negyesi

Foisal Ahmed

Technical Debt & Product Management in the AI era

Wise

**Connecting business goals with outcomes and everyday product work**
Why is it still so difficult for product teams to clearly explain how their work contributes to business goals?

Impact Mapping is a simple but powerful tool that helps teams connect the dots between “what are we building?” and “why does this matter?” by connecting

* Business goals
* Actors
* Behavioural changes and outcomes
* Concrete solutions

In this hands-on crash course, we will build an impact map together based on an example goal. Step by step, you will practise connecting:

Goal → Actor → Outcome → Solution

You’ll leave with a clear mental model you can immediately apply in product discovery, roadmap discussions, or strategy conversations.

Agenda
17.45 Doors open
18.00 Impact Mapping Workshop
19.00 Networking

**Who is this workshop for?**
Designed for Product Managers, Product Designers, and Product Engineers. The number of participants is limited to keep it hands-on.

**Thank you to our sponsor Liip!**
*Liip is a Swiss digital agency striving for digital, human progress by building user-centred products with lasting social, environmental and economic value.*

ProductTank Zürich

Tanja Lau

Anna-Lena König

Raffael

Savvas Stampolloglou

Jeremy Tuson

Nicolai Finke

Gunnar

Tobias Widmer

Karl Aschwanden

Catarina Martins Simoes

Mariana Coelho Silva

Julian Wilczek

Kateryna

Pascal Mollet

Nico Erb

Patrick Fischbacher

Hasse Lienert

Gianluca Negrello

Marco D'Addezio

Bianca O

Impact Mapping: A Practical Crash Course for Product Teams

Liip AG

Dear Product People in Cologne:

Dependencies are not the enemy.

Unclear ownership, slow synchronization, and too much parallel work are. Drawing on her experience leading a portfolio of 12 product teams, Anna will share practical “how-to” approaches.

She will touch on how to:

\- Make dependencies first\-class roadmap citizens
\- Stabilize alignment after a pivot
\- Surface dependency risks early without leadership intervention
\- Introduce WIP limits at the portfolio level

Don't miss the chance to ask your questions & connect with Anna and the community. Of course you'll have time to mingle and connect with curious product people from the Cologne area again.

**Agenda:**
7pm: Arrive and networking
7:30pm: Talk of Anna Hannemann (in person)
8:15pm: Q&A about everything you want to ask
8:45pm to end: open networking

We're proud to present **Netlight** as our location host again. Their new office is very central in Spichernstrasse! As always we're super happy to engage in a lively conversation with our speaker, and we'll get to mix and mingle at a beautiful location in Cologne.

Looking forward to see you on March 16th!

Best,
Shehrina, Simonetta, Tim, Esjona, & Dominik
Your ProductTank Cologne Team

ProductTank Cologne

Dominik Rose

Esjona Musta

Shehrina

Simonetta

Tim Klein

Esjona 

Pavel Ryukhov

Maru Waan Ek

Sumit

Lena

Maya

Zorlu

Thomas Brouwer

Peter Niessen

Felix Stein

Michail Petrischenko

Julian Junghänel

Haolin Ziehh

Eldin Zaimovic

Khattab Al-Ali

Managing Dependencies in Practice (Or: Why your roadmap is lying to you!)

Netlight Cologne

As AI transforms how products are built and delivered, traditional signals of credibility are becoming less reliable. In this Lunch & Learn meetup, Author and Growth Coach Kurt Schmidt will guide us through the exploration of how trust is earned—not just through outputs or expertise, but by revealing the decision-making process behind products. We’ll discuss how trust impacts product adoption, internal momentum, and organizational support, and share practical strategies for product teams to build trust that scales.

**What to Expect:**
\- A candid discussion on why trust is weaker and signals are noisier in the age of AI\.
\- Insights into how trust manifests as adoption\, momentum\, and “air cover” within organizations\.
\- Exploration of three critical areas where trust must exist: in the product\, in the people building it\, and in the organization backing it\.
\- Why narrating effort isn’t enough—showing decisions and tradeoffs is key\. \- Practical\, scalable ways product teams can build and maintain trust\.

ProductTank Twin Cities

Esra Kucukciftci

Darrick Jensen

Joe Lamusga

Maura McCafferty

Matt Roscoe

John D

Sufian Abu

Andrea Merrill

Mark Prondzinski

Sarah B-L

Davide Aldrovandi

Mark Leppke

Susan Quakkelaar

David Rodriguez

Matt Potter

Mark Dirnberger

Vicki O

koepp.alec

Marilyn

A Product-First Take on Trust in An AI-powered World

Online event

ProductTank

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Mind the Product

ProductTank

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