Delving into Product
I first learned who a Product Manager is and what they do in 2021. That’s because my friend wanted my thoughts on which career she should pivot to between QA and Product Management. I was at work at the time and told her, “I don’t know much about either, but I’ll research, and we can discuss it after the close of work.” I didn’t do deep research, to be honest. I googled, perused some websites that gave an understanding of both roles, and we had the conversation as planned.
I continued with Technical Sales and (some) Data Analysis until I decided to drop Sales and focus on the latter, after all, it had been my longest-standing love. I utilized DataCamp to learn SQL, and one day while doing that, I wondered at the possible outcome of merging data and the insights gained from with Product Management.
From findings, I learned that data can be leveraged throughout an entire product lifecycle and used to develop products and its features based on advanced data-driven insights. I was fascinated but didn’t feel ready, so I made no further progress past the knowledge I had just gained. Instead, I focused on SQL and also enrolled in a Backend-Python internship. While that was challenging, it didn’t stop me from feeling like something was missing.
“When one is truly ready for a thing, it puts in its appearance.” — Napoleon Hill
Months after my tweet, I received an email from Ingressive for Good about a Product Management scholarship. Applications were open for 24 hours and clearly, this was the universe sending a big sign my way. I applied as quickly as I could, got selected, and kicked off my PM journey.
The 6-week program allowed me to learn and work on tasks for entry-level product managers to get hands-on experience. It was more exciting because from previous roles, I knew how to build close connections with users and get user feedback on an ongoing basis to understand the things working for customers and those making the user experience sub-optimal. It felt like finding my niche in tech after a lot of effort.
The course had six (6) modules further broken down into missions. For the first mission, David Wang, the group product manager at Linktree covered everything from the role of a Product Manager to the Product Life Cycle using Theodore Levitt’s model to the Product Management Process including how this process plays out across the Product Life Cycle. He also highlighted the day-to-day of Product Managers in each stage of the process.
In the second module, Jannis Hegenwald, a Design Manager at Atlassian shared the different ways he and his team find problems that need solving, what he does to understand customer problems and conduct user interviews, and how they decide which feature to build. The project brief to be worked on for the program duration was given in this module — Launch Amazon’s new online product, Amazon Cars. I was expected to manage product delivery to achieve the objective of selling cars online directly to customers and include finance and payment options.
After completing the portfolio and meeting the requirements for the Product Manager certificate, I also got a reference letter 🥳. Since then, I have utilized theforage.com for virtual internships with BCG and Accenture that allowed me to apply product and stakeholder management, decision-making, strategic and experience design, as well as venture and growth architecture skills in real-life projects.
Some resources that have helped my journey beyond EntryLevel are:
- Webinars and workshops hosted by communities like Product School, Product Manager HQ, and PM Africa.
- Podcast episodes on The Product Podcast (Spotify)
- Exponent on YouTube
- Wentors We Discover Tribe Mentoring Program where the lovely Diana Archilaz, gave tasks, shared resources and practical advice on how to make career progress. My fellow wentees were great and an amazing support.
- Books like “Inspired” by Marty Cagan, “The Product Book” by Product School, “Swipe to Unlock” by Mehta et al. (2018), among others.
- ADPList which gave me the opportunity to speak to Karen Onigbinde, a Senior Product Manager at PiggyVest kind enough to share tips and resources from her experience using very detailed and insightful answers.
- LinkedIN Learning especially this course by Cole Mercer and Evan Kimbrell
I have also completed the Backend-Python internship, the Data Analyst in SQL career track on DataCamp, an Understudy programme at Olubrain which ran for 3 months until December 2022, a Data Analyst Nanodegree on Udacity (my GitHub), a Product Analytics Micro-Certification — where for a Case Study, I built and analysed behavioural, acquisition, and retention metrics for a NY-based food delivery app to understand and measure the value it delivers to its users.
While all these have taken a lot more effort than put into these few lines, I recognize the significance of these experiences for my skills and journey. For one, my time management and prioritization of tasks have improved competently, which has helped avoid burnout.
This new year, I am one of the leads and Product Managers for a team of 25, building a digital platform for buying and selling e-books, with services like a price guarantee for authors, and direct-to-consumer sales. Considering we’re supposed to launch an MVP in 4 weeks, it will be pretty intense, but I’m ready. My team’s progress will be documented on Hashnode, and I will share my progress here over the next few weeks.
Thank you for getting to this point, I appreciate it. If you’re making a career pivot to PM and need resources/information outside what I have shared above, or you’re more experienced and you have tips or advice you’d like to share with me, please don’t hesitate to reach out on LinkedIN or veffiwatt@gmail.com.
Till next time, cheers and enjoy the rest of the week!
