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Amazon invoice example for Product Management

okay uh hello everyone uh welcome to the session today we are going to be talking about how to break into product management throughout the session um i'll give you some useful tips and information about uh what is product manage what is product management how do you break into product management and i'm hoping that you would get inspired and interested into product management uh i'll talk about my experiences as a product manager and i'll also do my best to give you some helpful tips uh that will help you break into product management with that uh let's quickly jump into the agenda uh start off with a little bit about me uh then we'll dive deep into like know what exactly is a product manager what do they do what are some of the common myths about product manager uh and what are the core competencies that you need as a product manager and lastly we'll round it off with like how do you transition to product manager all right let's get started um get to know about me my name is uh balaji ananthan pillai i'm currently working as a senior product manager at amazon i have an mba from university of chicago board school of business uh i have 12 years of industry experience across several different functions qa project management product management never cross worked across different industries such as fintech customer experience legal tech hr tech and the whole purpose is like you know purpose of the session is not to talk about my career or my background but it is to highlight it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from uh you can be a product manager no matter what your background is in fact i've known uh some of the product managers who come from like arts background or some of the product manager uh who uh did their engineering and biomedical space uh and there's there's no one single uh formula there's no cookie cutter to like uh okay for a product manager you need to have an mba or you need to have a tech background you can go on linkedin search for companies that you're interested in and see what background their product managers have and sometimes you might be surprised to see like the kind of background that these product managers come come from and you'll find how diverse this field is before we go into this uh session um just want to let you know that feel free to connect me on connect with me on linkedin i'm happy to provide any kind of help or support for folks who are trying to break into product management or folks who are already into product manager i'm happy to connect with them as well uh and you know someone who wants to have like a chat with that's it let's go into what exactly is a product manager the role of a product manager is one of the most fascinating roles ing to me uh pm's uh are closest to action uh center of action they have like a lot of influence over uh key decisions uh and sometimes they uh end up going to own their own companies that's why it's no surprise that product management has and has been and has continued to show up on the list of best and most promising careers in the united states so how do you define what a product manager is so if you look at uh the book inspired marty kagan describes product manager as someone who combines business technology and design in order to discover a product that is valuable feasible and usable usable so what does this mean so as a product manager you have to be someone who is experienced in at least one of these three fields uh who's probably passionate about all three and who's able to converse with practitioners and all of those so now let's talk about uh each of these circles as shown in the venn diagram we'll start off with business go into tech and then uh round it off with ux so business more than anything else product manager typically is a business function unless it's explicitly spelled out as like you know a technical product manager uh so what does a business product manager do a business product manager is someone who's focused on maximizing the value uh from a product so what does that exactly mean what does maximizing the value from a product so as a product manager you should be someone who's uh who should be focused on delivering products that is um valuable to your customers valuable to your users you have to be able to empathize with your users you should be focusing on optimizing the product to achieve the business goals now what do these business goals mean these business schools can mean multitude of things it can be uh something around like uh am i uh driving enough customer satisfaction am i uh driving enough value for customers and the value for customers can be in different forms uh or it can also be like am i able to drive like enough annual recurring revenue so these are some of the kind of things that would be like business schools okay now we'll look at tech what does tech or technology mean uh technology doesn't mean that a product manager needs to have a tech background or a computer science degree the key here is are you able to understand the tech are you able to have those conversations with your engineering team are you able to understand the level of effort that is involved in making the right decision so it's just not about like what are you building as a product manager but it's also able to understand how you are actually going to be building these things so are you able to understand how you're building this and are you able to understand those conversations with the engineering team lastly user experience product managers typically and generally they are great in dealing with users uh they're great in advocating for customers that's why in some of the companies you might exactly see this term or terminology called voice of the customer product managers typically are voice of the customer as a product manager it would be beneficial to have that passion for user experience um in again this might not necessarily be true if you are someone like a platform product manager or an api product manager it's always good to have that kind of an intuition that kind of a knowledge about user experience to make that right decision for the users uh so as a product manager what do you do you test out the product you talk to your users you gather feedback you conduct market research so these are kind of things that would fall under this umbrella of user experience now let's quickly jump into okay we've seen what exactly is a product manager now let's see what does a product manager exactly do so it starts off with setting a vision for the product okay so how do you set the vision for the product three key words research research and more research you have to research your market you have to research your customer and the problem that the customers are having that you're trying to solve so for for doing this you have to assimilate you have to collect a lot of data uh it can be feedback from customers it can be quantitative data from your web analytics it can be research reports market trend statistics name it you need to know everything about your market and your customer and then what you do is you take up all this information to come up with ideas or define a vision for your product the key thing to notice is your vision addressing the customer problem if not you have to go back revise iterate the next important thing is communicating the vision uh communicating the vision and addressing it to the leadership team now if you have the vision what do you do you need to evangelize the vision you need to meet with different teams spread the word about your vision talk to them about your vision and what is the journey like how did you come up with this vision uh what made you get to this vision and to build a successful product it's just not dependent on product managers it is dependent on the team that bills the product and sells the product if you aren't able to evangelize your product of your vision or if you aren't able to clearly articulate your vision that means you're either not passionate about it or you did not come up with a good vision then okay let's assume you've evangelized the vision you've spread the word you've gotten commitment from leadership and you've even gotten funding what do you do next you define and iterate the product as you go as you move you solve problems as they pop up you closely manage the scope so that you can get the product out of the door in time and help address the customer problem that you're trying to solve for once the product is out there then what do you do it's it's it's not end of the world for a product manager once the product is out there because you have to spend time going over the data you have to look at like how your customers are actually using your product uh how your customers are finding value from your product you have to talk to your customers to understand what do they think about your product how are they using your product did you solve the right problem do you users actually understand the product uh sometimes you know some of these decisions you can actually make as part of building the product itself like usability testing to understand what is a user's interaction with the product will they know how to use the product etc but in but in other cases you can actually communicate with your customer once you've launched your product to understand how they are using the product then uh executing let's say uh you know execution is one of the important thing which is which is what we've been talking about like you know you define the product and you uh keep iterating on it just like how you come up with a compelling vision and strategy and you communicate the vision just like how these two are important executing on the vision is also equally important for a product uh once once you've evangelized your product and people agree with the vision and you know leadership team is ready to fund the uh initiative you go about working with your respective teams uh to actually execute on that question you come up with like you know better designs better code and better solutions to come up with a customer's problem remember uh product management is an extremely collaborative function uh you you work with like various stakeholders to build that ideal product for customers okay what are some of the common myths about a product manager uh these are uh some of the things that i've known and i've heard again not a very exhaustive list but some of the most common ones product managers many ceos of their product product managers need a computer science background or product management is same at every company so let's start off with the first one right like this is the most commonly and most overly used uh phrase in product management as far as i know product managers are many ceos of their product now after having worked in product management function for seven uh seven years i'd like to respectfully disagree with this phrase yeah product managers do lead and set the vision for the product and do have the ownership for the uh product but remember product managers actually lead with influence and not with authority the product managers they inspire their team with the vision they craft their strategy to achieve that vision and they influence the team to execute on the vision such that they can deliver highest impact for the customers versus ceo on the other hand uh they actually ultimate they are ultimately responsible for success of failure of not just that one particular product but the entire product or in fact like you know the entire company and the ceo uh can control all the resources of the company from a hiring firing perspective and uh they also would have like you know a final say on the budget but product managers typically don't have all that function next thing uh computer science background do you actually need a computer science background to be a product manager yes some companies might be biased to having or recruiting a product manager that has a technical background but having a computer science background is definitely not a requirement to be a great product manager in fact like some of the smartest and best product managers that i've worked across in my career are someone who didn't have a technical background at all uh for for product manager to be successful key things are like do you have a compelling vision and clear set of goals do you use data to actually experiment and form and test hypothesis do you obsess over your customers are you empathetic in terms of like you know what you're building does that actually uh solve for the user's pain point these are some of the things that you uh that's very important for a product manager and also as a product manager you need to bring strong leadership effective communication and the ability to inspire others remember product managers they lead with influence and not with authority so are you able to influence and inspire people to build the product to solve that customer problem lastly product manager is same at every company not necessarily true product manager it can be different uh in terms of like you know uh where you're working it in for a consumer package goods company product manager could be uh entirely different it could be a combination of product plus marketing uh if you look at um amazon web services uh product manager can be expected to be very familiar with cloud technologies so it's not necessarily true that product manager is same at every company okay core competencies of product manager let's look at some of the core competencies while it is true that you need to have like most of these hard skills remember hard skills are not the only thing that makes you a good product manager you need to have some of these com soft skills uh to complement your heart skills to be a better product manager um while hard skills such as product strategy design technical skills uh product development process all these are important if i've already touched on some of these soft skills but remember uh soft skills such as communication stakeholder management leadership and ownership these are some of the soft skills that are important that will make you a better product manager and the other key thing is networking uh in we've in a couple of slides back we spoke about evangelizing your product evangelizing your vision while networking can play a role when you're trying to get into product management when you're trying to get into uh a particular company as a product manager it can also play a very good role when you're within the company when you are working as a product manager how do you network how do you network with like different stakeholders or different teams how do you evangelize your vision how do you actually sell your vision you have to be a good salesman to be a product manager okay finally let's get to the topic about like you know how to break into product management uh these are again like four of the common uh parts or common streams and how you can actually break into a product management but remember again not an exhaustive list every person's different every person has a unique way or unique strategy but these are most common ways on how you can actually break into a product manager um you know as uh i've been reading articles by a couple of product leaders uh very recently one of the key things that came out is like you know to become a product manager you actually need to product manage your career so let's look at each of these in uh in a little bit of more detail internal transition with your company okay so this one's probably uh most easy and quick uh route of uh breaking into product management but uh an intern to have an internal uh transfer of some kind you need to demonstrate uh the skills that have outlined in the previous flight and more importantly you need to have someone within your company it can either be a manager it can be a peer or it can be one of the product leaders who can actually champion your case to be a product manager within your company like in my case i had my mentor uh when i was working as a qa engineer who was also my manager to champion my case to be a product manager and that's how i found my way from being a qa engineer to a product manager the other thing is finding a junior pm role in a large company uh in this this is something that i wish i knew uh or something that i wish that was there uh several years back when i was trying to break into product management but a lot of these large companies like facebook lyft microsoft they have associate product manager roles or they have like a apm uh rolling application going once or twice a year where you can apply without having any kind of product management background interview for those roles and actually find a place as an associate product manager in these companies remember to research about some of these roles in these larger companies and if you want further information happy to chat offline about it uh the other thing is joining a startup that has a pressing knee okay uh what does what does that actually mean uh so startup in a typical startup world is like you know where you do multiple roles not necessarily just a product management role and why is it actually good uh it's it's actually good because you learn a lot of things about the company which will further enhance your career as a product manager in the later years for example you might learn about like sales you might learn about marketing you might learn about finance which might be uh very useful if you grow up as a product manager and end up owning your own p l uh you might even learn about pricing strategies it might be very useful when you are trying to price your product and sell your product so joining a startup and showing a lot of uh hustle and delivering uh success when you have a chance will help you get into that product management space uh but again it's no it's easier said than done uh you'll need to have a vested interest you need to show that passion for that product that the startup is actually building and startup always comes with its own risk the startup men go either way sometimes it can go like it can be an extreme success or sometimes you know the startup uh might just like wind down after a few years it all depends upon like you know uh the company the product they're building and also the founder and uh their vision last thing is starting your own company uh not the easiest of uh opportunities but uh if you are a if you have a compelling question if you have a coupling strategy or if you're solving a real user problem why not start your own company uh again not easy uh not straight off the bat uh and quite honestly something this is not for me uh but there are people who've uh found success starting uh their own company and people who have started their own company generally uh are very solid product managers all right um so i i spoke about uh breaking into product management and i briefly touched upon like you know few articles that i've read in the past on like you know if you have to be a product manager you have to pm your own career just want to uh touch upon what that actually means just like how within a product management uh role you set a vision uh similarly try to set a vision and a strategy for yourself like why uh your your vision has to be that why do you actually want to break into product management why product management as a career in fact this can be one of the interview questions uh and it's always useful to have an answer for that set a vision and strategy for yourself and understand which companies that you want to target at what are the roles that they have what are some of the responsibilities of a product manager there what are what are the skills that they're looking for look up for these companies have a target list of companies look up uh these companies either on linkedin or go to their careers page look up the roles uh find out some product managers who are working for their company reach out do a cold call ask if they can have a coffee chat to talk more about uh the company the products that they are working on um and uh you know uh try to get an understanding again remember don't go in with the objective of like can you refer me to the product management role you don't know them and you have to start off your conversation networking to know more about the company and about the role then once you do that uh understand uh uh you know what your value propositions what are what are your skills what can you bring into the product why are you a good fit for that particular company and for the product management role there try to showcase what your value proposition is to these companies then after that try to try to apply to these companies or like you know actually in fact before even applying to these companies try to know more about their interview processes what do they look for is it all behavioral interview or is it like uh practicing case questions product sense product execution product design product strategy questions each company has their own unique interview process try to find out more about the interview process try to practice for these interviews behavioral questions uh go with the star format situation task action and drizzle um then uh after after the uh then you have like product strategy car questions how do you define a strategy for a particular product within the company if you were a product manager how would you design a product or let's say you've had a vision you have a strategy how will you execute upon the strategy as you can see these are like you know some of the common responsibilities of a product manager and that is exactly why some of the companies have questions around like product strategy product vision uh product execution once you have that try to do practice these interviews do as many mocks as possible with like you know uh your fellow colleagues or like you know with uh other product managers try to ask for time and see if they can provide you with some marks that will help you become better at product managers and after that go for applying for these roles if you have connections within the companies reach out to the connections uh see if they can refer you to the role again uh it it always has to be a two-way stream it's just not about like what can they do for you it's also what you can do for me find that common connection uh ask if they can uh refer you to that uh role within the company uh and then um once you get the uh interview call it's all about like going in uh doing your best using all the learnings that you've done over a period of like let's say two months three months six months and giving your best shot and trying to break into product management and here are a few resources that i'd uh generally recommend for uh either interviewing for product manager or like to know more about product management product management inspired by marty kagan is one of my go-to books to learn more about product managers in fact like i i keep referring it uh over and over in case i have like some questions some confusion etc cracking the pm interview and decode and conquer by lewis lynn these are some of very good resources to interview when you're interviewing as a product manager to give you some very useful tips on how you would interview as a product manager lastly some additional resources uh again i'll be sharing the slide uh with product school and you can always look at these some good blogs to read on how to break into product management or how to actually uh manage your career as a product manager uh some very very good resources that will help you uh as you as you build your career into product management something that i wish these were easy to find uh seven to eight years back when i was trying to break into product management and with that uh i'll this this will be the end of the presentation thank you so much and if you have any questions please feel free to dm me on linkedin this is my linkedin profile thank you again for your time bye [Music] you