What accomplishment in your product management career has brought you the highest level of satisfaction and joy? Can you narrate why?

At Ola I got the opportunity to be a part of the journey that revolutionised the way India travels from point to point. The experience of building platforms and products from scratch, being obsessed about ‘end user experience’, building empathy for different types of users, building for scale, has been very gratifying and rewarding.

What aspect of  product management did you struggle the most with? How did you overcome  it?

During my initial days I found it particularly hard to evangelise roadmaps with engineering teams and align them to the broader vision.  I started involving stakeholders during the problem scoping phase : user research, user calling, early solutioning and most importantly closing loop on the impact with all stakeholders (Whether success or failure) and this has worked for me. What I also realized is that the sooner I involved my stakeholders, the better my PRDs got, because they would ask some tough “Whys”, bring in all scenarios I hadn’t thought of and come up with some very creative solutions.

What's one common  myth about product management that you find common among aspiring PMs.

That, shipping a product is the most important part of the product development lifecycle - While shipping products & features does give an adrenaline rush, the harder and the more important parts are what happens before and after shipping. It's critical to answer your whys and follow through.

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What are some common  pitfalls that product managers must be aware of?

1. Shipping poor experiences as MVP. It’s very hard to get learnings from a product feature that may be sub-par
2. Loving the solution or idea more than the problem itself
3. Not brainstorming enough/sharing thoughts and ideas with people both in & outside the organisation

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If not product  management, what career would you have picked? Are there any complimentary skillsets that you see between being a PM and your alternate choice?

Something in the performing arts - I love being able to create something that will motivate & excite my users/audience enough to try and keep getting them to come back for more.

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What is something  about product management that you wish you knew when you started out?

Some products we build will do very well and some will do very poorly, but each one of them has immense learning. Sunsetting products/features is emotionally hard but only makes us stronger PMs and individuals.