I was invited to speak about Product Management as a career to students at my alma mater BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus.
This is a short snappy introduction to Product Management aimed at students.
I gave the same talk as a webinar on WeBind (webind.in).
A recording of the talk can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIsLd2pGo-k
2. ▸ Dalan Mendonca
▸ Electrical Engineering / BITS-Pilani
▸ Design, web development, firmware, image processing,
creating new businesses models, tried it all!
▸ Facebook - Data Analyst (2012 - 2014)
▸ Removing bad likes & reducing spam from Facebook pages
▸ Paytm - Associate Product Manager (2014 - 2015)
▸ Instamojo - Product Manager (2015 - Present)
HI!
3. WHAT IS A PRODUCT MANAGER?
▸ Product Manager : Product :: CEO : Company
▸ A PM (or the PM team) is responsible for every aspect of
the product from bounce of the animations on the app to
the speed of customer service. You own that shit & any
product problem is your problem.
▸ PMs bring direction and clarity to the team so that each
person knows what their work is adding up to
4. SKILLS NEEDED TO BE A PRODUCT MANAGER
▸ Hard skills
▸ Analysis/research
▸ Writing spec documents
▸ Wire-framing
▸ Project Management
▸ Basics of design and
software development
▸ Soft skills
▸ Communication
▸ Conflict resolution
▸ Leadership
▸ Rapid Decision making
6. WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER DO?
▸ Obvious things
▸ Prioritising things
▸ Managing projects
▸ Leading the team
▸ Designing
“human systems”
▸ Not-so-obvious things
▸ Saying NO (politely)
▸ Tricking/seducing people
to get work done
▸ Filling in gaps and
leftover work
7. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT IS A WEIRD
DISCIPLINE FULL OF ODDBALLS AND
REJECTS THAT NEVER QUITE FIT IN
ANYWHERE ELSE
Ken Norton, Google PM
WHOM IS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FOR
8. IF YOU WANT TO
GO FAST GO
ALONE
IF YOU WANT TO
GO FAR GO
TOGETHER,
African Proverb
9. CAREER PROSPECTS
THEY’RE PRODUCT MANAGERS!
Apart from $$$, the PM role is a great starting point to being an entrepreneur or a CEO
• Joel Spolsky, founder/CEO of StackOverflow was a PM at Microsoft
• Kevin Systrom, founder/CEO of Instagram was an APM at Google
• Sundar Pichai (current Google CEO) was a PM at Google
and many more …