eSignature Licitness for Product Management in Canada

How to eSign a document: e-signature licitness for Product Management in Canada

hey everyone i am europe's guide gogna welcome back to another video in today's video we are going to discuss about product management and how it's different from the other profiles like the product owner and the project management we are also going to discuss about the skills that you require to land a good job into the product management so without any delay let's get started [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hybridish first of all thanks a lot for joining the call today hey smile thank you for having me appreciate it so british before i ask you any questions related to your job profile can you please introduce yourself to the audience yeah so my name is pritish i was i'm originally from india i've lived half my life in india and half my life in canada i live in toronto right now i work as a product manager at a tech company that's focused on digital identity access and access management um it's been a lot of fun [Music] living in india and living in canada and kind of having both perspectives and being able to really have a world view and then put that into my professional side of my life right so it's it's been really beneficial i think and anyone who's even coming from india to even you know canada and us i think they have a lot of innate skills that they don't realize will actually be appreciated here in many ways so yeah okay and to this i'm very curious to know like as a product manager what are your what is your day-to-day what are your job roles and responsibilities so first of all i think it's important to realize that product manager is a completely made-up title some company at some point was like hey we need something called a product manager and he needs to do this this this or she needs to do this this and this and um it's it's really important to realize that we're all product managers of our own life first of all um if you've ever set goals you're doing product management if you're ever looking one or two years ahead or figuring out a three year plan you're doing product management you're doing life management transferable to product management and even back when there were no titles for product managers or product owners or whatever there were always people doing that responsibility it's just now that the responsibility is is so much dynamic that you need a person to kind of fulfill this role at this point otherwise you could still have your senior engineer do some kind of product management or even your ux ui design people do product management so and again then it determines on the size of the company as well so just to give a sample day i guess if i have to it would be like you know i'll join morning scrums as usual kind of get an idea of where we are in terms of delivering a certain feature delivering a certain product understanding the roadblocks that are going on and being able to [Music] guide our developers and make sure there's priority uh assigned to them like hey making sure that they are working on the right uh things that they should be working on but you have to communicate it in a way that um doesn't show authority because you have no authority you're not a boss of anyone you're the boss of the product you're not anyone's boss per se um and i guess after that you know i could get into my research activities a lot of readings and research happen as a product manager you're constantly scoping out uh use case studies uh you're looking at product people other people's products other companies products and how they've succeeded or how they've failed and why it happened or why it didn't happen and this isn't something you know your company requires of you to do but this is something you need to do so that you're on top of things you know you realize what your consumer wants and versus what he doesn't want or so what she doesn't want and um so you go into research you go into readings and then after that i'll have a meeting with maybe the sales and marketing people who have been developing some kind of relationship with the client and they'll tell me hey this is what we kind of hope to deliver to them do you think it's possible with the current product we have so i'll go back and kind of have a look at our product and just like making sure that how close are we to delivering these requirements uh to this new client that our sales people have brought in right and then on top of that if we're not close at all i have to start devising a plan what does that initial release look like of our product what does the second release look like and what does the final release look like because you can't have everything right away you have to build it in iterations right and then after that i'll have another meeting with my developers to kind of uh well not my developers but just the development team again i don't i'm not one's boss but um i want to make sure that they're on top of the right things and tasks and priorities specifically speaking uh and this is where i know uh like you may ask this later on but i feel like there's a lot of fusion of what we call product manager and product owner so um that that me talking to developers getting to the product owner uh area it gets into the product owner area so um that's just one sample day but it's important to realize there's no day that looks the same as a product manager you're dealing with sometimes the ceo you're dealing with the engineering team you're dealing with the market people dealing with the sales team you're dealing with ux and you're like just this center piece in a wheel right that has these spokes going on in different directions and um if you've i don't know if you've heard about this phrase but basically product managers are called like mini ceos because you're the ceo of the product except you have no authority over people right you're overlooking the product you're looking forward you're planning and you're being a visionary about your product so that's just that's just a sample day i mean i can give you more examples but i think i doubt it's unlocked yeah it seems like it's a very happening growth and it is very happening yeah and with this while you were explaining me you mentioned that you attend daily scrum so i assume like your company is also following those agile methodologies and you have also also mentioned about the product owner so i was wondering like what exactly is the difference between your profile or what exactly is the intersection between the product owner a project manager a product manager so like these terms they sound very you know same but i am pretty sure like they might be very different from each other and also like uh can these three different roles coexist at the same time in one single team or in one single company or also like you you you said that you are a product manager right so can there be more than one product manager in a team so please just clarify these things sure um again as a company if i was hiring for these roles uh i wouldn't specifically say i want a product manager i want a product owner i want a project manager i would specifically seek what do i really need at this point and uh if i need someone to [Music] take ownership of a product that we have or build out a product that we want in the future i want them to be able to have vision about where the product is going i want them to have expertise about the competition expertise about the consumer very in touch with what the consumer wants um i'm looking for someone you know looking for a product manager then i i do this because there's so much fusion between product manager product owner and even sometimes even project manager if you're in a small company i'm in a small company right now i work in a company size of 50 people i'm doing all three at any given day my responsibilities are jumping from one to the other to the other to the other even though my title is product manager now when you get into a bigger company you can have these roles exist separately because a the company can afford these roles there is such a wide array of operations that need to be done that you need specifically people for very set responsibilities uh and of course you have the funding right essentially to have these people you can hire so a product owner is very involved in the agile methodology that you brought up uh the product owner is working with you know there he's working with jira he's writing product um epics user stories ensuring that the development team is on top of these stories understanding what they need to deliver as a product manager i'm making sure that our overall goal and requirement is clear to product owner then because they have to write these technical requirements that will be delivered to the engineering team like this is if you are very specific you want to have a product manager and a product owner oftentimes it's not the case oftentimes there's so much fusion uh like i said based on your budget and everything that oftentimes the product manager will not only look do forward thinking vision of the product but they'll also do this uh day-to-day uh agile operations as well which are important and then uh project manager will get into the realm of coordination deadlines organizing people's time so that they can meet uh do whatever they need to do talk out remove any roadblocks whoever they need to talk to and make sure people have the tools they need to be organized and on top of their tasks so it's if you want to give like one or two word summary project manager is very work coordination product owner is working on [Music] uh the agile methodology very strongly embedded in the agile methodology writing user stories looking at jira letting the developers know hey uh this is the prioritized bug solve bug a not bug b not right now you know and product manager is getting into the market the consumer the market understanding higher level thinking but again at any given day all these three things can fuse you can be involved in any of these responsibilities if you're any of these any of these titles yeah so the product owner is more about in the team and for the product manager you have to do the market research you have to come up with the new ideas you have to study about the competitors also like what exactly they are working upon and then bring those ideas into a team and then just discuss with the product owner and then he's the one who is mostly uh converting them to technical requirements and then you know forming the tickets and everything right exactly exactly that's that's if you can afford these three roles separately right okay otherwise currently in my job i'm writing the tickets as well i'm writing those user stories as well okay and british i'm pretty sure like you come from the development background so in your day-to-day role so is it totally management or you get to code some uh some days um again if you're working in a startup you'll be very tempted to just if there's a bug fix you kind of want to do it yourself sometimes and like it's such an easy bug fix i know the code i'll make the fix myself and i'll get my architect to review it and then they can merge it in but you have to stop yourself from doing that oftentimes especially if you're from an engineering background because you need to be focused on the right things and you need to let you need to make sure you need to be able to work with your developers in a way that you have confidence in them to be able to complete all of these tasks and tickets even if it's a small book even if you're tempted to you know open up a merge request really quick write up the code and push it up like avoid i would say avoid it unless you have like 10 people in a company only and you have a product manager and two developers and you're like all hands on deck you know you need everyone to be contributing to code at that point then it's there are no rules if it's a very small size company who does what what does as you go into a bigger size company things change if i if you were to ask my ideal opinion i think everyone should be able to produce code everyone should be able to contribute at the end of the day and not just developers because it's supposed to be very cross-functional tech is all about being cross-functional being aware of each other's responsibilities and being able to help each other out as much as you can because it's not about oh this is my job i need to do this it's about hey i see you're busy with 10 other priorities let me help you with this bug fix and we can move on but as of right now i'm not coding i've stopped coding i was coding up until last year before i went into product management and uh i haven't really touched the code base i look at the code base just to understand what's going on and understand our apis and endpoints but um i'm not actually making any pulled requests from those requests so when you say like you are looking into the code base so is it the requirement of a job or you are looking just out of curiosity for your own sake so that you can be more clear about how the things are being implemented because the reason i'm asking you is because a lot of people might think that is it compulsory to be a developer first and then you can only move into the product management role or like someone from not exactly development but let's say someone is a business analyst and he wants to join your product management so can he jump into this role like what are your views on this i think so it's a really good question i think uh what's important to know early on is what kind of product manager do you want to be okay uh do you want to be someone who works in things like b2b a very technical oriented product management if you're working on iot devices hardware and just um you know just it's it's just a bunch of apis you offer you don't really care about the front end right uh that becomes that's it becomes helpful to have technical skills i wouldn't say that you need it but it's you will obviously be given preference at that point especially for those kind of b2b and a hardware related product manager if if it's a hardware kind of company you're looking for the people who have knowledge in that field and understand it at that point because you're because if you're working in hardware you're kind of like integrating with other hardware components from another company or something like that and a business analyst still can come into this role it's a lot of learning a lot of rapid learning and the company needs to be able to be patient with them to be able to learn that being said it's not that bad news because there are something called b2c product managers which is business to consumers right now you're looking at consumers only you're on trying to understand their pulse you're trying to understand what they actually want and you want to make sure that you actually understand their requirements from what they're voicing to you as a consumer right sometimes they want something which may not actually be good for the product uh because it can complicate other things for other users so if i want to give you if i can give you an example um facebook people have asked about hey can we get a dislike button can you please get a dislike button i want to dislike this like now that's yeah sure you can add that if you want now as a product manager i'm thinking yes this is what people are telling me they want how what are what are some of the other problems that can happen with the dislike button and i'm not saying there there shouldn't be a dislike button but i'm just saying how would a product manager think about it like you have to think about other users as well and how will they interpret a dislike button so if someone posts an article about something really bad happening around the world for example the conflict in europe right now um and people put a dislike oh and what they actually mean to say is i don't like the fact that this is happening in ukraine or i don't like the fact and people would dislike there people could also interpret it as oh he doesn't agree with the article he thinks it's news or he this is this is not real right and what you're trying to understand is the user when they say they want to dislike they want to be able to voice their emotions towards the news in the article right um and what facebook is now has all these emoji reactions instead right which makes it a little bit more clearer and because you have a wide array of emoji reactions it's not as polar as a like and a dislike anymore right it's just people are voicing and i think as a human you understand emojis better sometimes then a thumbs up and a thumbs down so this example is you being in very in touch with all kinds of users right this is helping you have that intuition about your users and not just listening to 10 of your users to try to solve a problem for all 100 of your users uh you can make everyone happy but you can try to solve a problem uh in a way that even though users said hey i want solution a sometimes solution d that no one's really thinking about is actually better because you're understanding the user from beyond what they're asking from you're asking what do they actually want to do right so this is one example so b2c no technical skills not necessary always um i for i forgot the guy's name but the ceo slack you know slack is used everywhere and now uh he did a bachelor's in masters in like philosophy or something and he get into product management for a company called flickr and and then he became a ceo of slack and he's a co-founder in the ceo slack but a lot of that is you know product management when you do ceo stuff that's product management so um you don't need to have technical skills you can make things work especially if you want to go for b2c uh business to consumer product where you really want to understand so it's all about critical thinking really understanding your consumers having listening skills and having really good communication skills and just analytical skills you know all that stuff i think that was a great explanation so the way you explained about the facebook thing i i never like being a consumer i never thought like this was the mindset that might have went behind designing those different buttons and and even like in in youtube these days you can you can dislike but it's not showing up maybe that's the reason that you have just mentioned so now after your explanation i can you know look into things with a different perspective i think it was a great creative yeah and don't don't take my word for it i don't know if facebook did it because of that that would be one of the one way i would be thinking about the problem right and that's what i'm just saying like people if you can think about problems like that that's a really good sign maybe product management is for you right so okay yeah so uh since you have mentioned a lot about the market research and you know being experienced with the product so i want to know if someone who is just out of the university is this role meant for them also or like they need to have some industry experience and then only they can enter into this so the way you have told us that you need to have analytical mind so i think if we even if we are doing a bachelor's or master's degree we can develop like to some extent we can develop these skills while we are still at the university but if we talk about industry specifically about the industry so when a company is hiring do they look for more experienced people or even the fresh credits can also be the part of the team um let's yeah i think again size of the company matters here uh in a smaller company you may have a chance especially if you're coming from a background of like not a background but let's say you did your education on marketing product development there's no real degree right now i think mainstream degree that's product management but anything around those lines that are organizational analytical critical thinking skills any degree that's related to even if you came from philosophy for example right because then you have a mindset of understanding human behavior or just human philosophy right i'm not saying that it's impossible i think it i think it's better if you go into the company with another role like if you're going into marketing do marketing if you're going to software um you know go go into development and spend maybe a year you know to spend really understanding that and listening and being aware of what your ceo is talking about constantly what are their road maps understanding the pulse of the company understanding the product from beyond the code right like if you're in computer science you want to go beyond the code you understand what is actually being developed why is it being developed who is asking for it why are they asking for it and question question the company's choices as well right not in a way that's obviously rude but just ask critical questions that you think um that you think you know actually will lead to a better product right so i would say i don't think it's impossible to go straight into product management but i would say it's definitely preferable if you do at least a year or two years of uh whatever you know some some other part in the company whether it's marketing sales coding uh whatever degree you have based on that whatever job you get in the company and be very forward in your interest of being a product manager you know let them know from the get go that this is how you envision yourself but i you'll commit yourself to the marketing role sales role as best as you can but you will want to be mentored in a way so that you can be a product manager as well because companies are looking for product managers left right and center everyone's dying for it it's it's it's uh it's a booming uh field and i think um anyone who's interested in learning about people's problems out there and wanting to solve them a product manager is a good fit and especially if you want to be an entrepreneur later on in your life i didn't think of myself as an entrepreneur i've never thought of myself as an entrepreneur before and i didn't think i have it in me but because as a product manager you interact with everyone in the company almost everyone you start seeing what the engine looks like of a company and how to run it better and oftentimes you'll disagree with higher management about some things you may not bring it up but you're like if i had my own company i'd run i'd do this differently and you start thinking in that and slowly you're like oh you know maybe being an entrepreneur is not that hard it's just about having a vision understanding people's problems and executing and not looking for perfection so yeah so to this you have mentioned a lot about the uh developing a mindset a problem-solving mindset to be very specific and i would like to know like if someone is really interested into being a product manager so you have also mentioned one more point that at this point there's not a specific degree that deals with the product management right so are there any kind of certifications or even like some of the universities they're coming up with the masters in entrepreneurship or some courses like this so do you think like in the long run they can be helpful uh if someone wants to target this profile yes i think uh certifications are definitely good if you want to increase your skills uh right now i think it really gives you tools and ways to be organized and ways to look forward and ways to plan for your product um and even sometimes uh how to learn about your consumers well all these things can you know you can acquire a bunch of skills but they don't mean much until you are part of a company actually doing these things i don't i'm not exactly aware like if you went to like a google if you want to work for a product manager google facebook the big fan companies um [Music] if they have these required set of skills i think they'll put you through you know crazy rounds of interviews and try to understand you as a human being and try to understand uh is this person actually into problem solving uh it's one thing to be good at but are they actually into it if they're into it they'll naturally be good at it and they'll say stuff that other product managers aren't preparing for right you know it's just who you are who you become over time right especially if this is something you're interested in so yes you can get certifications there's some like uh i believe there's some accreditations you can get there's this uh thing called the aip mmm uh certification uh and then there's also this non-profit like new product development professional certification that you can get there's also the product school which starts which is meant for people who have no experience in product management you do the initial program then there's another program on top of that which becomes more a little bit more technical understanding devops understanding engineering teams needs and getting into that and then there's higher level certification by product school so product school is someone who's giving you these certifications it's it's an online academy but i'm not sure if it's an online academy but they can give you these certifications and and then they have the senior level executive product management certification they can give you um so you can go and try and all these things i would implore and i would request people to give this a shot but know that product management is a very flexible wide array of responsibilities that may not always be learned from these certifications sometimes you just have to have dive deep fail learn maybe go to another company try it again learn about your consumers keep on trying and put your ego away because you're learning about people you you can't you don't know any people think they know about about other people oftentimes we don't know and we can only know by trying uh different things with the product yeah i think that that was a really great conversation british it was really insightful and you know it personally gave me a lot of uh overview of like what exactly this role is all about and maybe in future i can consider this role because the thing is like these roles are not that traditional roles that everyone knows about them so these are like currently emerging roles companies are still trying to figure out do they need these types of role in their company and i think yeah this was really good talking to you and it gave me a great overview of the industry thanks a lot for your time today thank you thank you so much it was really good for me too uh it's it's very important for me to say these things out loud too to remind myself why i do what i do and where i want to go with my future and thank you for your time thank you for letting me speak i appreciate it thank you thank you so guys this was a tourist video i hope you have liked the video please make sure to subscribe the channel and let me know in the comment section below which other videos would you like me to make in the future see you in the next video till then stay safe