Rodrigo Martins — The 5 What
Rodrigo Martins
Lead Product Manager no PagSeguro / BoaCompra, mora em São Paulo, Brasil
About
He started his career as a designer until he became Head of Product in one of the largest digital companies in Brazil. Besides being a product professional, he also dedicates himself with great intensity to triathlon and ultra aquatic marathons.
Contact
The 5 What
What is the most valuable thing you carry with you from the beginning of your journey as a product person?
A good product is product that people use. Each one of us has a background, a repertoire and this can be decisive when designing a good product, so the maxim and most valuable idea of working with products is that to be a good product it has to solve the customer’s problem and customer is unique and should be in the highest position of our priorities, where we should concentrate our efforts.
What do you identify as a common thing among people working on product development?
They all came from other areas. There is no product graduation and when we talk, even in the past, about agile transformation and we have the role of PO it is common to see people who came from “business area”, experience or technology. Comes from these three pillars the development of the Product Owner and its attributions.
What do you think will be the next big trend in product development?
PO is a role, PM is a career. I think one of the main trends is to think about the career of those who manage products, not those who just manage backlogs and sprints. I’ve been reading a lot about PMs focused on different aspects and aligned the hierarchy of product needs. To think about product management from end to end is to remove the grey areas of roles and responsibilities within an agile culture regardless of maturity.
What have you learned recently?
Today, my biggest challenge is to make my team evolve faster and with more quality than I did and help them develop new talent. I say that reaching it, I will have created a perfect ecosystem of personal development because I believe that developing people is developing the business. It’s through these people that products, companies, businesses, and goals are achieved and all part of people.
What would you like to say to the product people who are reading this text?
Think of the customer! I repeat: good product is a product that people use. We always have the challenge of turning good products into profitable products, look at those long roadmaps, and think that there is still a long way to go. Always be very clear where “get there” means and always have your customer in the main focus, after all, there is no roadmap that survives if you are following the wrong path of your customer’s need.
