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

Within the first 6 months of my joining , Yulu was undergoing a significant pivot , one that reinforced confidence in the external stakeholders ( primarily investors ) , which resulted in Yulu’s Series B fundraise.Yulu was pivoting its Product towards solving for the needs of the gig workforce. We launched a Product ( Digital + Physical ) that enabled gig workers to use a special bike ( designed for delivery ) and keep it for a longer duration. We now have a very strong Product Market Fit with an extremely high retention. There were 3 key reasons that gave me extreme joy - 1. We were successful in enabling a pivot to the organisation where the Pareto from a business contribution perspective reversed. Today, the lion’s share of business comes from the gig worker segment. This when there was growth in Revenue. 2. The TG that we attacked now was significantly different from the TG that we were targeting before launch , which pushed the entire Product , Design & Research team to move out of our comfort zone & engage with the customer segment deeply to solve for problems3. The sheer volume of iterations & product interventions we shipped was fabulous. There were several enhancements that we did to this new customer experience journey and we pushed ourselves to achieve a zero pitstop experience for our customers which pushed us to deliver improvement on NPS. However , the journey is far from over.

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

Prioritising Debt adequately. A lot of young & growing companies make the mistake of always over prioritising business critical changes and not bothering to cover up for business , product & technology debt that has been accumulated because of the MVP ideology. I have faced severe resistance as a foot soldier PM , product leader and as the head of product during my tenure.   While I would be very incorrect to say that I’m out of the woods , there is a 2 pronged approach that I take towards solving for this.   1. Aligning the Engineering leader - this is the easiest piece , and no one more than an Engineering leader would love a PM for utilising bandwidth to cover for debt. We work towards an allocation of bandwidth phenomenon , where we allocate a certain % of bandwidth towards debt incurred. This bandwidth is not exposed for new OKRs and helps solidify the base. The question commonly asked is why & why now , where the next point becomes critical. 2. Share vulnerabilities openly - Share vulnerabilities of the current stack very openly and state clearly the limitations of scale & feature complexity that could be handled by the current solution. These are done as 2 parts . Once these are made aware , business teams that have runway , typically accommodate knowing fully well , why      1. Discoveries that Architects make on cracks in the system      2. Points of failure articulated by PMs in the launches & PRDs that are shared for common consumption

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

Myth 1 - Product Management is a desk job.
Myth 2 - It involves writing fancy PRDs , and launch emails.
Myth 3 - Product Manager is at liberty to choose what to build and when to build it by  The ground work behind what goes into building a product is not understood. An ideal PM spends significant time evangelising , researching , firefighting , problem solving , documenting & aligning. There is very little time that a great PM spends at his desk and what he does at his desk , comes more often than not out of his own time ( not work time ).

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

3 Pitfalls -  
1. Do not love the solution , love the problem
2. Do not build without research
3. Do not build for all.  
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1. Problem first - enough said , but still not followed. Mature organisations & startups alike , people move from meeting to meeting pitching solutions. Be a problem lover , be different. Build affinity towards the problem. Don’t build a solution looking for a problem.
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2. Do your research - I recently met a great PM & he articulated this very well - Not understanding your user , and his problem enough should be a hard dis qualifier for creating a solution. Building without research is a very common occurence , where lack of time , lack of avenues to meet customers , pressure is cited. At the end I believe , you will build a sand castle which will fall during it’s test in real life.

3. Hero Customer - Build for your super user , imagine who he is and live his pain. He will be the one person who will vocally refer you and talk about you. In the event that you build for everyone , you will end up building for none.

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?

Business Analyst. I started my career in Analytics and was having a reasonable run in it. I would have continued in that domain. There are a lot of complimentary skillsets between being a PM & Business Analyst - Fluency with metrics , identifying the right metrics to attack - Strong Problem identification ( BAs do this with data , PMs add research to the mix ) - Communication & story telling - a great analysis much like a PM’s Roadmap / PRD requires great narrative to sell

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

There are a lot of PM personas in the world - Growth PM , Data PM , Platform PM and the list goes on. Had I known about this , I think I would have spent significant time understanding the exact persona that I would be interested in & can identify well with.