Product Management Chat

When I think about IoT,  I mostly think about my Apple Watch. I also imagine how cool it would be to live in a home with not just a smart TV. But also with other connected appliances such as a smart fridge, coffee machine, thermostat, camera, alarm system, doorbell, and a smart lock. Furthermore, how amazing the future of work would be if we’re all driving smart cars, and even living in smart cities. But more than that consumer side of IoT, it is actually more prevalent in the AECO industry. That’s where Ritesh Chandawar, Group Product Manager at Screening Eagle Technologies has spent most of his career. AECO stands for Agriculture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations. IOT use cases include: smart buildings installed sensors predictive maintenance the drone technology, etc.

One of the most misunderstood relationships on cross-functional and software development teams are between the Designers and the Developers. One of the misconceptions is that the Designer likes most aesthetically pleasing user experience. On the other hand, the Developer likes building something that’s easier and more feasible Designers don’t have the technical skill to build the thing that they want to be built On the other hand, Developers don’t have the perspective of the users’ needs. Lots of misunderstandings and improper stereotyping. So.. to handle the tension. There should be: 1. a data-driven decision 2. user feedback That’s where good UX comes into play. As a previous UX Researcher and now a Product Manager at speakX, Riya Arora shares some guidelines.

Three things that are *personally* exciting about GenAI, according to  1. Helps increase productivity e.g. drafting emails, summarizing email threads, writing meeting minutes, coming up with a to-do list What’s most amazing is it can even help us prioritize tasks based on the the data that it can gather from all our emails and chats :) 2. Make our work happier GenAI can help us with the mundane/ repetative work, but so we can focus more on activities with high outcomes 3. Creativity It can help us come up with better brainstorming marketing ideas faster.  Yes, there are a lot of hype that’s going on around GenAI. So it’s amazing to hear some of the things that can make us *personally* excited about it.

Yashi Srivastava, Senior Product Manager at LearnApp, was recognized by ADPList.org as one of the Top 10 female mentors in Customer Experience Also, she previously had a “Top Product Road Mapping Voice” badge on LinkedIn. So I’m honored to have her on my podcast :)

In the words of Marty Cagan in his book “Inspired”, the Group Product Manager (usually referred to as GPM) is a hybrid role.  Part individual contributor and part first-level people manager. Stephanie from Waresix has been one for almost 3 years now. Listen to our conversation in which she shares how she balances being an IC and people manager as a GPM :)

To become a good Product Manager in tech: You need to be “technically trained”. Meaning, trained in software engineering You need to learn Scrum or Agile Both are common misconceptions of most of us essentially So.. it’s been amazing to sit and talk to Justin Chew as he debunks those misconceptions. And shared how can non-tech folks *successfully* transition into tech as a PM. Successfully, meaning, no need to take a pay cut or start with an associate role :) Also a fun fact: the aspiring Product Managers that he coached came from unusual backgrounds (e.g. airforce, army, civil service, etc.) Any questions, you may reach out to Justin on LinkedIn— https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcyw/  For a more tailored product coaching, you may check out Justin’s website— www.justinPMcoach.tech

In the words of Marty Cagan in his book Inspired, a Product owner is the name of the role on an Agile team for the person responsible for the product backlog. I’ve also heard on a Product Thinking podcast by Melissa Perri that she doesn’t not love the split of Product Managers and Product Owners. Reason being is it that a Product Owner is a backlog grooming jockey for the Developers. And that there’s no critical thinking involved. I asked Matt, Product Manager at Microsoft what the Product Owner has been for him before. Some key takeaways are: The title/ responsibilities change from company to company It becomes less nowadays. It’s basically a role that most people had in their early days, before they become a Product Manager

There’s a lot of great Product Management books out there. Some of my favorites are: Inspired by Marty Cagan Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri The Lean Startup by Eric Ries And I’ve yet to read some which are The Lean Product Playbook, Continous Discovery Habits, Cracking the PM Interview, and so on. All were recommended to me by the product people that I spoke with. So all are realllly insightful. However, I was also told several times that it’s still best to build. Learn by doing > learn by reading

Working with several industries such as FinTech, healthcare, e-commerce, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, media, etc., Manish Mrigank said all companies are technology companies nonetheless. Fun fact, even Nike calls itself a technology company. As a Product Leader, the things that helped him adapt when switching industries are: 1. Empathy Because any industry is trying to solve a customer problem nonetheless :) 2. Being agile and continuous in learning Because technology keeps on changing

A friendly reminder to aspiring product managers that it’s okay if you don’t know a lot of tech jargons in the beginning :) Ankur Goyal, Product at Virtual Internships used to not know all of them either. But was humble enough to ask and learn from his developers whenever he got the chance. Fun fact: Ankur has created a Product Management community called “Creators of Product”. And Lenny is a part of it back in the day :)

One of the many things that most of us admire about Amazon is its customer-centricity. And as PMs, one of the things that we need to balance is doing what is best for the Customer AND the organization. Being customer obsessed ≠ doing everything the customer say This reminds me of the Henry Ford quote that says: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” So... Ijaaz Ahamed, Senior Consultant for Tech Product Management at Verizon (ex- Amazon) talked about how to manage the tensions from customers and align them with business goals.

Madan Chander, Delivery Head at Tech Mahindra has mentored hundreds of people who are willing to transition into a product role. According to him, anybody can become a Product Manager IF: They are customer-obsessed and have empathy They think problems from the outside in, not inside out Inside-out -> you think of what you have (ideas, experience) and how you can use that to gain a market, create a product, and sell it. Outside-in -> you think of the underserved need, and then you look at the problem statement, and define it clearly. You use a problem-solving method called the 5 Whys. P.S.  Madan’s goal is to make people excited about Product Management for the right reasons. And I felt that when I spoke to him :) Listen to our full conversation in the comments.

I’ve watched several webinars from Product School. So that certain visual representation of MVP is already familiar to me and makes sense to me. Seeing Animesh Chandra’s viral post about it is interesting, as there have been some good debates and healthy discussions in the comments. A key takeaway is that— in an MVP, there always should be some form of rapid feedback from the users/customers.

How to crack into a PM role if you don’t have a tech background or an MBA Read “Cracking the PM Interview” Checkout the @Exponent YouTube channel Be a Product Manager There are a lot of books, podcasts, certifications, and other resources out there. But based on speaking with a lot of PMs over the past few months, the 2 best ways to get started are 1) building/doing and 2) coaching. Hear how Here’s how Stallon Miranda, Technical PM at Microsoft would coach someone who’s looking to get into a PM role. But doesn’t have an MBA, tech, or designer background.

Demand Gen VS Lead Gen— it’s a debate that most marketers are already tired of seeing on LinkedIn. I’ve had horrifying experiences in the past when I shared some opinions about it internally 😅 So it’s best if it comes from Vivek Shenoy instead. He's the Head of Partnerships & Product at Audyence. We always hear about this hot topic from marketers, which makes sense. But in the meantime, it’s so refreshing to hear a demand gen VS lead gen perspective from a Product Leader.

What a spy does based on the movies: gathers intel analyzes information and strategizes for the best solution works closely with teams to accomplish their mission calculates risk properly, because one wrong move can be really bad negotiates and persuades to get what they want and need adapts to different countries and cultures that they were assigned in Quite the same as what a product manager does on most days, right? This resonates with Ujjwal’s article that there’s quite an overlap between what a spy and a product manager do. https://uvtimes.blogspot.com/2018/12/pm-is-double-agent.html

Today’s new episode is about the type of AI that we all talk about— which is Generative AI 🤖 I’ve seen people rave about how GenAI can: write code write music crack jokes create presentations And even generate images, which is one of the cool features of Picsart. Their mobile app allows creators to make images from a word, phrase, or sentence. So, my guest speaker, is Valerie Gan, Gen AI Product Manager of Picsart. Valerie has launched some AI product features. She talked about the challenges that they experienced with AI, how we can get all started in learning GenAI, and what resources are good.

Product for Non-Profit The perception towards, let’s say, profit sector and the non-profit sector is that it is assumed or perceived that there’s a lot of more innovation that happens in the for-profit space. Considering the amount of capital, the amount of money, and human skill sets that are in it.  So there is a bias towards that the innovation happens in the for-profits space.  However, he thinks the tides are switching greatly. So much in such a way that the wins are mostly towards the non profit sector nowadays. Because we are at an increasing realization of the fact that most of the critical problems that you're facing currently are something that the non profit sector is trying to solve, and it would not be able to solve without bringing in the critical innovations that is there around. If it is not being a part of the profit sector, but unless we incorporate it together, it might not be there. So in that manner, products in the social sector space, product for non-profit organization, is a new trend that's been emerging. Largely because of, let's say, lack of funds, lack of resources, lack of even skill set that was a part of it. There has been a lack. But now there is a significant shift in towards more people wanting to work in the social sector, more grants and funding that is going towards the social sector that is increasing, the opportunity of products that are developed.  The second aspect is also that, these products, while as much as it is solving for the problems that the for-profit is working towards, which is to, let’s say, user attention, user engagement, acquisition, et cetera. What makes it important or critical here in a non-profit sector is that, it brings in an aspect of understanding the human to a deeper extent that is towards impact.  So impact becomes the larger goal than any other business goal. It is there as a part of it. So keeping that as the core metric is, it does becomes challenging, in order to solve for that goal through technology.  And of course, there have been several products in the nonprofit space. In every other domain. In education, agriculture, healthcare, and organizations are taking that as increasing inspiration, in order to achieve a lot more innovative things and effective solutions. 

MBA in Product Management, according to Tilak Pattnaik: An MBA is not absolutely necessary, in order to transition into a product management role. However, where an MBA helps is in giving a perspective on how business function in general. Be it how the organizational makeup typically is of a business, and how do you navigate that organizational sort of makeup. In order to push your ideas, push your product through. So that they can go on to the market. So that business perspective, and organizational perspective, is very important te Go-To-Market how do you exactly go-to-market how do you position a product how do you market a product what are some of the sales tactic around products So on, and so forth That aspect is very important. Of course, there are other aspects of product management, which is around designing the product themselves, prioritization of product features, working with developers, understanding the technology, and the technology stacks behind the products that you’re building, all of that is something that you don’t need an MBA for. Now if someone has sufficient experience working in businesses, also someone has sufficient understanding of technology, and sufficient understanding of design, sort of user psychology, then an MBA is not necessary. However, having an MBA just makes it easier to transition into a product management role. B2B VS B2C Product Management The fundamentals are very similar across the board At the end of the day, you need to figure out what your target group is, what pain points are you solving, what should your MVP be, how do you achieve that product-market fit, how do you scale up, and how do you sort of continuously work into providing that value to the users as the product becomes bigger and more mature. So all of these things need to be done. Needed on the manufacturing side of things, in B2B, and in B2C side of things. However the tactics are very different. In B2B, the person who decides who sanctions buying a particular product VS the team which actually procures the product VS the team who are actually using the product. Those are three separate teams. Three separate entities, and many times the incentives for them to do it might be sort of very, very different. For example, if it’s an IT system, maybe a Chief Information Officer sort of decides that we need this sort of system because it helps us in solving that particular pain point. When it comes to sort of onboarding that product, it’s a vendor team, or a procurement team, which would sort of procure the product from you. For them, what’s more important is ensuring that the cost are low. And their legal terms and agreement of procurement are in place. That’s the most important thing. How well it is solving the pain point is not something sort of they look at. Whereas, the people who are using it within the organization— the users. For them, how easy are they able to use the product, to solve the pain point, that becomes more important. So there, design, UI, UX, becomes very important. The person who decides, the CIO— for example, UI and UX are not important. For them, the features are important. These features should be there, so that we can actually solve it. For procurement, cost and legal aspects, procurement aspects are more important. So those are the reasons why, there are the buyer VS the decision-maker VS the user— they are focusing on different things. Hence, yes, as a product person, it’s important to align the incentives of all these 3 stakeholders well. So that the product can be solved. But yes, selling is a different thing. And using is a different thing in a B2B context. Whereas in a B2C context, usually the buyer and the user are the same. So it’s very important to convince them that you know what, we’ve got a great product that could solve your problem. It’s very easy to use as well. And hence, it’s worth your time in investing in the product.