MENA PMs #1: How Qawafel Builds Products | Walid Elaghil

I’m kicking off a new series where I share how the most effective product teams in the MENA region build products. In this series, I’ll interview the most influential chief product officers (CPOs) and senior and mid-level product managers. During the interviews, I’ll concentrate on the professional backgrounds of those PMs, how they build products (processes, techniques, methods), and how they work with other product teams on a larger scale.

I’m excited to launch this series with Qawafel, one of today’s most innovative and impactful product teams. The product teams in Qawfel are led by one of the most knowledgeable PMs in the MENA region, Waleed Elaghil.

Waleed is an ex-entrepreneur and ex-product manager at Clickup. He is the Head of Product Management at Qawafel, leading three product teams to build 4 products. In the interview, he shared insights into growing your career as a PM, balancing short- and long-term bets, and developing the right skill set to become a product leader.

Part 1: Breaking Into Product Management

Shehab: Tell us about your educational background

Waleed: Well, I come from an engineering background. I graduated with a bachelor’s in civil engineering from AUS, one of the top universities in the region, and worked as a structural engineer for 3 yrs working with architects and managing draftsmen and site engineers, which shaped my stakeholder and project management skills.

I then decided to change careers after falling in love with the world of technology and entrepreneurship. In this journey, my source of education was reading books, a lot of books, following expert blogs, and practicing all that in my startup.

Recently, 2 yrs ago, I also joined Reforge, which I believe is one of the best educational sources for practical and rare lessons you learn from top high fastest growing companies.

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Shehab: Which part of your education was the most beneficial for you? Did you have any particular subjects that helped you in your day-to-day role as a PM?

Waleed: Hmm, that’s a bit hard to answer. I feel humans evolve and change drastically without noticing or knowing exactly a specific turning point. But looking back, I think all subjects helped me to think “systematically” as a product manager. This also comes from my work as a structural engineer, where we followed a structural code with FA (factor of safety) when building structures since the risk of failure is high. Although this follows the “waterfall” thinking, it indirectly helped me learn how to construct agile workflows that can operate efficiently and consistently.

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Shehab: How did you break into product management? And what is the ultimate takeaway from your journey?

Waleed: Passion! I think I was born to be a “product” guy. It also has to do with my love for engineering, which is more of practicing your “problem-solving” muscle.

I remember the spark for this passion. In my last semesters in university, I started noticing the financial stress in my family. And coming from a family business, I’ve started thinking of launching a business to support my family. So I researched starting a construction consultant company, talking with my friends, and building a team. While going through the company licensing, I was shocked by the number and difficulty of the requirements.

I then stumbled upon a blog post explaining how Facebook makes money, which opened my mind to “biz model innovation.” How does a company that owns no assets and offers free solutions to its users still make billions of dollars and become such a powerful force?
That’s when I started falling in love with technology and entrepreneurship.

Every startup must have a type of people: the sales guy and the builder. I’m more of a builder. I then started an EdTech startup called Mogs, which was my first break into product management.

My key takeaway from breaking into product management is “have the hunger to learn something new every day.” If you notice that you get bored reading about it, then consider that maybe it’s not for you.

Part 2: Managing Product Teams

Shehab: How did you start transitioning into more senior roles?

Waleed: It wasn’t planned; I was unintentionally demonstrating senior-level “skills” that my managers noticed and started putting me in the right place. I’ve seen other intelligent people who, from day one, understand the rules of the game (what it takes to climb the ladder) and start learning the skills required with a sneaky ability to showcase them intentionally to be noticed.

Since my goal is to be a founder of a great company one day, I naturally acquired skills required for leadership and senior levels without knowing.

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Shehab: How many PMs do you have as a direct report?

Waleed: Three PMs

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Shehab: What was the most important for you in terms of getting the people part right?

Waleed: Alignment in specific values and principles. The principal value that always helps me find top-notch PMs is a high sense of “ownership & responsibility.” Product managers with such values can never fail me. In a senior position, it becomes boring and even meaningless to micro-manage people. You need people you can rely on. People who, even if they don’t know how to do things, you can be sure that they’ll find a way.

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Shehab: Do you structure your product teams around products, user types, user journeys, outcomes, or something in between?

Waleed: It heavily depends on the nature of the business, and it’s not a science. It’s more of a preference. I’ve seen successful companies with different structures. In most cases, I prefer structuring product teams around different user types so they gain expertise, empathy, and knowledge of that specific user. Empathy is key here. If you focus on structuring teams around products, you create “solution-focused” teams.

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Shehab: How did you find the balance between starting on a high-level but still getting all the context?

Waleed: By thinking big but starting small. Zoom out and “think” big, but when you start execution, thinking big harms you.

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Shehab: What was the most important for you in terms of getting the people part right? Do you use OKRs (e.g., objectives, key results, 70% goals, etc.) in some form?

Waleed: Regardless of the framework, you need an end goal and metrics measured in a timely fashion to tell you whether you’re close, behind, or away from that end goal. It’s that simple.

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Shehab: What is the critical outcome of your work as Head of Product?

Waleed: My goal as Head of Product is to build a system & a team that will allow us to delight our customers with the best product out there!

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Shehab: How do you align your team on the strategy and the vision? How do you make sure that everyone feels heard?

Waleed: You need to repeat it often. The best lesson I learned from Zeb (founder and CEO of ClickUp) is to repeat the company’s mission as often as possible to help align the team around it.

Although I’m still learning a lot about this, I’ve found that the best way to ensure alignment is to create weekly events or meetings where all team members are gathered and aligned. These are good opportunities to remind the team about strategy and vision.

As for making others feel heard, I think it’s one of the most critical aspects, and although there are many ways to enable this, I’ve found that the best way to approach this when you’re at a senior level is to be humble enough knowing that others have a unique point of views to whatever you’re doing (whether it’s a vision, strategy or even idea). Their point of view matters and is indeed needed to fine-tune things and think about things from multiple angles.

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Shehab: How do you set the strategic priorities for your product teams?

Waleed: This would require a dedicated interview on its own. However, in a nutshell, It starts with aligning with the company mission, OKRs, and priorities, then gathering as many external and internal inputs (insights) to inform you on what’s essential for your product vision, customers, and business. When you get these insights, you then have clarity on what needs to be built.

Part 3: Building Products

Shehab: How far out do you plan in detail? Do you use roadmaps?

Waleed: Yes, we use roadmaps at Qawafel. Many people are trying to stand out, telling you that you don’t need a roadmap and trying to brand it around “lean roadmapping” and so on. That’s nonsense to me. Roadmaps are nothing but goal-setting artifacts and activities to make your day-to-day work meaningful.

I don’t suggest planning long, tho. Quarterly roadmaps with OKRs are enough to keep you and your product team focused. As Mike Tyson says, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Long-term planning makes you more vulnerable to being punched in the mouth; hence it’s less risky to plan short-term.

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Shehab: How do your product/design review meetings work?

Waleed: These are great opportunities for product owners, product managers, or designers to share their work while seeking feedback to sort of “fine-tune” it.

In Qawafel, we have our product review divided into themes:

1. Theme One: Idea — where PMs seek feedback around ideas in their problem or discovery phases and get prioritization feedback
2. Theme Two: Scope — where PMs seek feedback around their PRDs and solution space
3. Theme Three: Design — where designers share their designs seeking feedback around UX and UI
4. Theme Four: Demo — where engineers seek feedback on what they’ve built during the sprint

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Shehab: Do you engage with the product teams to break the strategy into initiatives and features?

Waleed: Absolutely! As I mentioned, strategy is not built by the leader to close his doors and think alone. Strategy is a collaborative outcome of all teams coming together.

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Shehab: How do you ensure efficient execution? What methods do you use with your teams?

Waleed: Through building systems. We follow the EPD (Engineering, product, and delivery) system, where we ensure alignment and collaboration between all key stakeholders responsible for building the product’s experience.

Part 4: Last Words

Shehab: What was the most inspiring book that you read last year?

Waleed: Shape Up by Basecamp! It opened my mind to how different ways of doing product management can also lead to success. It’s not science. It’s art! And every artist has a great portrait to show.

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Shehab: Any advice you want to share for aspiring and seasoned product managers?

Waleed: Stay humble and keep learning.

Shehab: Thank you for taking the time to have this interview and to share insightful nuggets with us.

Waleed: Thank you, Shehab!