Main takeaways: -Basics of technology every product manager should know -Communicating with your engineering team and peers -Staying abreast of technological developments

1. Embracing Tech from a Non-Tech Background
by Uber Product Leader
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5. Embracing Tech from a Non-Tech Background
Unmil Hulke, Product Manager

6. Unmil Hulke
S P E A K E R

7. A B O U T M E
Work experience
Post MBA
● Currently, Product Manager, Payments Risk @ Uber
● Previously, Senior Product Manager, Customer Onboarding @ Paytm
Pre MBA
● Senior Mechanical Engineer @ Robert Bosch
Educational background
● MBA, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
● Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

8. A G E N D A
2.
1.
Managing stakeholders in Tech
Tech skills for Product manager
4.
3.
Summary
Be Curious, Keep Learning

9. Tech skills and Product Management
Is having a technical background necessary for being a good product manager ?
- No.
Many successful product managers do not have a CS degree or any prior experience in
software development
Do I need to know how to code in order to become a product manager ?
- No.
Your engineering team will be typically owning the actually coding and execution. As a PM,
you are not expected to code.
Do I need to understand the tech that is enabling the product ?
- Yes
As a PM, you are expected to understand, on a high level, the system and how it interacts
with other systems (internal or external)

10. Stakeholders in Product management
Product Manager
Users
Internal Stakeholders
External Stakeholders
Feature
Requests
Engineering team
Data Analyst
Product A
Product B
External Services
Dependencies
Dependencies
Design and UX
Market,
Competition

11. Understand the boundaries
Why What & When How
● Customers
● Market
● Competition
● Business Goals
● KPIs and Metrics
● Product vision
● Roadmap
● PRDs
● UX
● Prioritization
● Architecture
● Tech Stack
● Execution
● Scalability
● Maintenance
Product Manager Engineering
Flexible

12. Understanding the product
A PM should be able to explain the product’s technical
functionality to non-technical audiences
Key is to understand
- Product stack and architecture
- Key platforms and services used
- Understand the capabilities and limitations
- How the systems/services are interacting with each other
- APIs
- Message queues
Additional accelerators
- Understand where and how data is stored
- Table schema
- SQL querying
- Shadow the testing team
- Understand and execute a few test-cases
- Share critical test cases that would be part of UAT
Source: Narendra L
Sample architecture diagram

13. Source: Narendra L

14. Understanding the product
In order to provide user a particular experience
● Define the use-case
● Which services/components are needed?
● Execute the use-case through a sequence diagram
Example Use-case
- User is logged into a healthcare application and
wants to get a medical test done
- User wants to schedule a slot for getting a doorstep
medical test sample collection appointment
- If successfully booked, user should get a notification
30 mins prior to the slot
Services/Components
- App (Front end)
- Scheduling service
- Order management system
- Notification service
- Fulfillment service
Sample sequence diagram

15. Managing your tech stakeholders
Paint the bigger picture
- Tie up with the larger
business objectives and
impact
- Always keep the end user in
perspective
- Simplify - Internal & External
implications eg. Compliance
Product Requirement Document
- Focus on completeness of user
stories
- Data driven problem
discovery and prioritization
- Consult engineering leads in
areas related to execution
Backlog & trade-off management
- Facilitate processes, build
strong teams, and mediate
conflict
- Prioritize trade-offs with
knowledge of technical
dependencies and impact
Diagnose user issues
- Create a map of use-case and
systems involved
- Identify components that
might be the issue
- Identify root causes and
potential fixes for the issue
Ballpark estimate for a feature
- T shirt sizing approach
Product capabilities and limits
- Collate similar use-cases
to prioritize roadmap
How to integration with the
product
- Key APIs and Specs
Stakeholders from
other teams
Working with your engineering team

16. Curiosity > Knowledge
Industry specific Tech
- Product manager needs to be on top of tech trends specific to the industry
- Depth of technical knowhow needed varies according to industry
- Industry newsletters and follow key industry leaders on social media
- Subscribe to engineering blogs, tech news, podcasts, etc
Platform Tech
- Key tech developments in the platforms that your product uses
- Keep a look out for competition and how they are leveraging tech
- Understand the pros and cons of each option
Seek help and keep asking
- Sit down with your engineer(s) to understand the tech stack
- You will always keep learning and getting surprised
- Attend technical workshops or brown bag sessions at work

17. 2.
1.
S U M M A R Y
Build a technical understanding of your product. Keep asking for help where needed
As a PM, your job is to come up with the best possible end product for your user
3. Fill in the gaps, the ‘What’ and ‘Why’, when interacting with the engineering team
4. Use your technical understanding of the product to manage external stakeholder wishlist
5. Remember that building the technical understanding is a continuous process

18. Thank You!
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