Speakers from Adobe and PayPal, have spent a good number of years as Product Managers in their respective companies. Their stories give you an idea of how the role of a Product Manager evolves with time.

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The Product Management Journey by
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8. TONIGHT’S SPEAKER

9. ◤ About me
▪ Engineer and MBA
▪ 12+ years work experience (9+ years in product)
▪ Built Global products ground up
▪ Married and have two kids

10. ◤ AGENDA
▪ My journey to product management
▪ Role clarity
▪ Skills required that need to be developed
▪ Career path of product manager

11. ◤ My journey to product management
▪ Started as an engineer and worked in Verizon Data Services India
▪ Took a break to do MBA
▪ One small stint as a marketing manager
▪ Joined PayPal as a Product Manager

12. Defining product management
▪ As a product manager, I have a responsibility to my customers (current and future)
to release a product that meets and exceeds their needs – even if they are not fully
aware of their needs. I also have a financial responsibility to my company that the
product will meet revenue and margin goals. Finally, I have a responsibility to my
development team to define a feature set that, if they can deliver it, will meet the
first two objectives.
- John Miniati (Kellogg ’96)

13. ◤ Products

14. ◤ Product Manager
▪ Product manager is not
▪ Program manager
▪ Engineering manager
▪ Marketer
▪ Product Marketing Manager
▪ Business Analyst
▪ Solution Architect

15. ◤ Product management brings all functions together
▪ Typically works with Engineering, User Experience, Analytics, Marketing, Program
Management, Business units, Legal, Risk, Privacy, Compliance, Sales, Integration,
Infosec and whole lot more….
▪ Channels every team’s point of view while building the product
▪ Is the CEO of the product

16. ◤ But still, what do they do?
▪ Understands the customers and customer problem to solve
▪ Understands competition and the positioning within market
▪ Identify product gaps, generate new ideas, and influence investment decisions to improve product
capabilities.
▪ Defines the product roadmap and prioritizes features based on business benefit/ time to market/
engineering complexity
▪ Work with UX / Research teams to validate concepts/ user research as necessary for the product/ domain
▪ Accountable for authoring/grooming detailed user stories
▪ Work with cross functional teams in the development/ approval/ launch of the product
▪ Drives product quality by partnering with engineering for the acceptance criteria/ usecases
▪ Works with Sales and Integration teams to help pitch/ integrate the product to right customers
▪ Works on creating product collateral that could be used for demos/ sales pitches/
▪ Monitors the performance post launch and iterates the product based on feedback

17. ◤ Skills required that need to be developed
What worked for me and would work for most PMs

18. ◤
1. Customer focus

19. ◤
2. Awareness

20. ◤
3. Detail orientation

21. ◤
4. Decision making

22. ◤
5. Collaboration

23. ◤
6. Great communication skills

24. ◤
7. Multi tasking/ Context switching

25. ◤ Product Management Career Path
©2015PayPalInc.Confidentialandproprietary.
25
▪ Slightly varies from company to company
Associate
Product
Manager
Product
Manager
Senior
Product
Manager
Group
Product
Manager
Director
Vice
President
CEO of a
feature
CEO of a
domain
CEO of a
platform
CEO of
multiple
platforms
CEO of a
Product
Line
CEO of a
Business
Line

26. ◤ Questions?

27. Rakshith Naresh, Senior Product Manager, Adobe
Wearing the PM hat – Is a nice idea good enough?

28. My Story - How did I end up wearing this hat?

29. Engineering Hat Vs Product Manager’s Hat
Opportunity lies here
PMs spend significant time here

30. How do you access an opportunity and wear the PM hat?
Business
goals
Problem
Target Market
Market Size
CompetitionDifferentiation
Market
window
Go-To-Market
Success
factors
Blueprint

31. What is the business goal?
Target Market

32. What is the exact problem?
A crisp definition of the problem that is being solved

33. Who are we solving the problem for?
Target Market

34. How big is the opportunity?
Target Market

35. What are the alternatives there?
Target Market

36. Why us?
Target Market

37. Why now?
Target Market

38. How will we take this to market?
Target Market

39. Do you have dependencies or constraints?
Target Market

40. What’s your recommendation based on all of this?
Target Market
Business
goals
Problem
Target Market
Market Size
CompetitionDifferentiation
Market
window
Go-To-Market
Success
factors

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