Career Insights into Product Management ft. — Sarosh Mohammad [Senior PM @Microsoft]
So this Saturday, I spend my time watching one of the best PM I know, sharing career insights about Product Management in a Webinar hosted by Seekamentor. After the webinar ended, it left me with notes expanding up to 5 pages and some refreshing insights about PMing that I wanted to share further, hence this article.
Bring your popcorn tub and take a seat and enjoy reading these Career Insights into Product Management.
Before we start, let me give you a quick introduction of Sarosh —
Sarosh is the PM for Outlook on the mobile browser, Co-Host of Podcast — Product.fm and IIM Bangalore Alumni. He is a super generous and always up to share more and more with the community. You can find him at — LinkedIn.
So, How do we define Product Management?
Product Management is a very fluid role. Some people will say that the product manager (sometimes called the program manager or project manager) is like a mini-CEO of their product.
That’s accurate in some ways, since a PM takes holistic responsibility for the product, from the little details to the big picture. The PM needs to set vision and strategy.
The PM defines success and makes decisions. But in one of the most important ways, the description of a product manager as CEO misses the boat: product managers don’t have direct authority over the people on their team.
Basically,
Product Management = Getting your team together to build a great Product.
That said, it is right to say that Product Management is a highly collaborative role. The vital two parts of it are — Strategy and Team Communication.
Though it is a continuous cycle of,
Build ➡️ Ship ➡️ Learn ➡️ Repeat
What is the skillset required for being a Product Manager?
There are many things they learned on the go while working as a Product Manager, some skills that everyone looks into budding PMs are —
- Problem-Solving Skills: Having a hunger to solve problems is a very crucial skill for PMing.
- Customer Obsession: This is an overused word these days, but it is true. Right from inception to delivery, a PM should be able to think from the lens of the customer, that the end product will serve.
- Structured Thinking: This is something that separates Great PMs from Good PMs.
What does a Product Roadmap look like?
Talking in the light of — Cracking the PM Interview, Book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell, these four phases are more or less similar in every digital product management.
- Phase 1 — This includes research around the domain, Market research, and User research. A PM collaborates with multiple teams to get a holistic research view.
- Phase 2 — This includes focusing on Pain points of the customer, hypothesis, and design.
- Phase 3 — Once the designs and hypotheses are approved, they move towards the UX team for the creation of Mockups and to the Engineer team for prototyping.
- Phase 4 — Ship it! But the work doesn’t end here. Once shipped, there is a continuous loop of feedback, analysis, and insights that are used to improve the Product further.
What are the different Terminologies associated with the Product Management role?
Many terms are used to define a PM, and mainly it differs from company to company. Example — At Microsoft, the term Program Manager or Sr. Program Manager is used for the person who is doing the job that is mainly done by a Product Manager everywhere else. According to some industry experts, a Program manager’s responsibilities are subset of the responsibilities are of a Product Manager. Amazon has a Technical Product Manager role as well, which comes in between Product Manager and Engineering team.
No matter what the title is — The most important thing is —
You do whatever it takes to build a Good Product.
On a typical day, which is the teams that a Product Manager needs to communicate with?
It mainly depends upon:
- Which is the current phase of the Product? (Design, Development, Ship)
- What is the domain of the Product?
Majorly a PM communicates with the Engineer team (including Developers, UX Designers, Researchers, and the Data Science team), Sales, and Marketing team.
Sometimes it is also required to work with localization, legal, finance, and support team as well.
How can somebody know that Product Management is their calling?
Technology is the biggest disruption of this time. So if you want to create impact —
- You either build a business around Technology.
- Or you build Products around Technology
If you are passionate about technology, you can bring disruption by envisioning the products for the future.
What’s the trajectory of the Career of a Product Manager?
To put in the simplest terms, when you grow as a Product Manager your area of ownership increases. You might start with a small feature and later on the number of features or the number of products you manage increases. The impact you have on the Company increases.
Is MBA necessary for PMing?
The short answer is No. It is like the question — Is MBA necessary for Entrepreneurship?
Though, if you have an MBA, it gives you a generalized approach that a PM needs and an Alumni network for headstart.
Some Good Resources for understanding Product Management
There are many good resources across the internet. Some books, blogs, and podcasts that one can consider are:
- Books: Cracking the PM Interview (by Gayle Laakmann McDowell), Crossing the Chasm (by Geoffrey Moore), The Lean Product Playbook (by Dan Olsen), Thinking Fast and Slow (by Daniel Kahneman)
- Blogs: Product Management section of Medium, The Black Box of PM, a16z articles.
What is PM Case Interviews?
Case interviews are a way to evaluate aspiring PMs. These Case interviews include questions around:
- Metrics and Estimations: What a success metrics of a delivery platform will look like? How many trees are there in the city?
- Product Design: Design a Particular product for a particular audience segment.
- Product Strategy: New features, acquisition, business-based questions.
- Logical Thinking: basic puzzles.
Tips for Resume
Few things appreciated in the resume of an aspiring PM are —
- Work experience in technology.
- Work experience with impactful projects.
- Multi-functional and cross-functional role experience.
- Any kind of entrepreneurial experience.
If you have read so far, then you are probably a textphilic. But, if you want to see the video version of this webinar, you can access it here — Youtube.
This Webinar was insightful for me, I hope it helped you as well. Thank you for reading so far.
If you liked this article or have any suggestions or questions for me, drop them on: meghapathak2013@gmail.com (you can drop a Hello! as well, I love to hear from my readers).
If you have any more questions regarding Product Management, feel free to drop them in the comments below.
