how to create awesome products
TRANSCRIPT
HOW TO CREATE AWESOME PRODUCTS
AN INTRO TO PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
▸ Dalan Mendonca
▸ Electrical Engineering / BITS-Pilani
▸ Design, web development, firmware, image processing, creating new businesses models, tried it all!
▸ Facebook - Data Analyst (2012 - 2014)
▸ Removing bad likes & reducing spam from Facebook pages
▸ Paytm - Associate Product Manager (2014 - 2015)
▸ Instamojo - Product Manager (2015 - Present)
HI!
WHAT IS A PRODUCT MANAGER?
▸ Product Manager : Product :: CEO : Company
▸ A PM (or the PM team) is responsible for every aspect of the product from bounce of the animations on the app to the speed of customer service. You own that shit & any product problem is your problem.
▸ PMs bring direction and clarity to the team so that each person knows what their work is adding up to
SKILLS NEEDED TO BE A PRODUCT MANAGER
▸ Hard skills
▸ Analysis/research
▸ Writing spec documents
▸ Wire-framing
▸ Project Management
▸ Basics of design and software development
▸ Soft skills
▸ Communication
▸ Conflict resolution
▸ Leadership
▸ Rapid Decision making
WHAT PEOPLE THINK I DO
WHAT I THINK I DO
WHAT I REALLY DO
WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER DO?
▸ Obvious things
▸ Prioritising things
▸ Managing projects
▸ Leading the team
▸ Designing “human systems”
▸ Not-so-obvious things
▸ Saying NO (politely)
▸ Tricking/seducing people to get work done
▸ Filling in gaps and leftover work
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT IS A WEIRD DISCIPLINE FULL OF ODDBALLS AND REJECTS THAT NEVER QUITE FIT IN ANYWHERE ELSE
Ken Norton, Google PM
WHOM IS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FOR
IF YOU WANT TO GO FAST GO ALONE
IF YOU WANT TO GO FAR GO TOGETHER, African Proverb
CAREER PROSPECTS
THEY’RE PRODUCT MANAGERS!Apart from $$$, the PM role is a great starting point to being an entrepreneur or a CEO
• Joel Spolsky, founder/CEO of StackOverflow was a PM at Microsoft • Kevin Systrom, founder/CEO of Instagram was an APM at Google • Sundar Pichai (current Google CEO) was a PM at Google
and many more …
QUESTIONS?