A Day in the Life of a PIPE Product Manager
I start my day at 9:00 AM after a strong coffee and a bowl of granola, then log into my Outlook and Slack to check and reply to new messages. At 10:00 AM I check in with my team during our daily morning stand-up. It’s a great way to see what the rest of the PIPE team is up to and to keep everyone aligned on what to look out for in the coming days.
On a typical day, a Product Manager from PIPE will be running an Ideation lab, or a Show and tell or work on completing a Business case for a particular idea that has been submitted to us from within Arup. An Ideation lab consists of 10–12 sessions where we do a deep dive into some of the major questions a product manager has to address: What are the problems we are trying to solve, and why? What is our market size and who is our potential user? What features and functionalities should this particular product have? I start identifying use cases and look at problem statements, data, users, and customers — identifying the most critical problems and why they should be solved.
Our problem statements address pain points — an issue or challenge which provides opportunities within a specific sector. Can those problems be solved using the data we are already collecting? This data can provide an understanding of what’s out there and what can be done to utilise that data. Can we automate some of the processes and if so, how would that benefit the user? What can we learn from the existing data and what further value can we add?
Just before my lunch break, I often spend time talking to potential users and collecting as much information as possible on how our future products might be used. This includes information on features, technical requirements and UI/UX. This can also help to identify new features and capabilities of a product we hadn’t fully explored. We typically create a questionnaire which we use to guide this process.
My lunch break is usually half an hour long where I try to get some fresh air in the garden or eat at my desk while reading the news. After lunch, I start prepping for the next Ideation lab session, which at this stage looks at preparing a brief for partnering opportunities.
At PIPE, we explore potential partnership opportunities for our products. We conduct research on potential start-ups and SMEs to partner on development of a particular product and are always very keen and excited to explore what’s out there. We also analyse our competitors and always take various risk factors into consideration.
The final steps of Ideation lab involve technical feasibility. We complete our user journey mapping, finalise the technical architecture and proceed to scaling. We look into ways of executing our products and marketplace exposure. We go through a process of identifying product value, market size, the final users — and ways of reaching out to them.
My day usually ends around 6pm with a cup of mint tea and a quick preparation for the next day. Product management is a very versatile and a diverse career path, so no day is the same. There are aspects of design, research, marketing, collaboration, communication and UI/UX. You could be looking into market research and user problems, or communicating with various teams from sustainability to urban planning, or working with project management or development teams. It is a role which requires attention to detail and reflection on feedback from key stakeholders. For product managers many different roles are intertwined into one and this is precisely what makes it very exciting. Being a product manager at Arup makes it even more exciting as you get to work with experts from different sectors ranging from construction to more niche specialists such as our colleagues in the water, air quality or fire sectors.
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This piece was written by Asya Starovoyt, a Product Manager at Product Innovation, Partnerships and Ecosystems team within Arup. Asya’s background spans across a wide range of digital practices with years of experience in consulting and managerial roles.
