Switch to Product

Fig 1. Illustration of people drawing on board. Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash

Introduction

It’s been 11 months since I graduated from university and working at my first full-time job. After some small research and input from some of my colleagues, I decided to take a jump and gamble around. This entry is my notes 3 months working as Associate Product Manager at EKRUT. There is still a long journey though I think to become the best Product Manager.

PS: I have been working for almost 5 months by the time I published this post because I can continue writing this right now.

What I expected to learn

At the point, I decided to switch there’s not much I know about the product. Yes, I’ve heard a thousand times from my friend working on product or UI/UX but I didn’t know what it is and the scope of that role. I have known there’s a difference between Project and Product Manager. To make it simple, the project has a time constraint and the product we maintain it to lasts. Sometimes the project could be a subset of a product and also product could be the output of the project.

I always thought that the product is the same as engineering because in my previous experience they combine product and development in one division. Then I started to learn what product is by joining the product community that I could reach. First, I joined Product School and get The Product Book e-book for free. I found out that the book covers products theoretically and it takes me months to understand what is inside that book after later I experienced it in my new workplace.

Then I found out something really different.

First three months

What is really is? Now I know that being a Product Manager is the intersection of three different fields. The Business, The Technology, and The User Experience (UX). Quoting Martin Eriksson in his writing that a Product Managers should have at least experienced in one of the three fields described, passionate to learn and execute those three, and able to communicate within all experts in every area needed. He even draws a diagram to tell it simply where are the Product Manager took place.

Fig 2. Product Manager depicted in Venn Diagram. Copyrights belong to Martin Eriksson © 2011 from https://www.mindtheproduct.com/what-exactly-is-a-product-manager/

The main responsibility of the Product Manager is prioritizing and strategizing what the team should deliver first to market by using effective and efficient resources. This is in line with Marty Cagan’s statement that he described in his book Inspired. That a Product Manager job is “to discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible”.

To discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.

Marty Cagan

I started here by learning user experience, then learning about the business process and workflow that happened here. Then I learned that as a Product Manager we must balance everything not only focus on the tech stack and development. This happened to almost every business that plans to shift to tech. Your product is great when people know and willing to use it, and don’t make people know your product but they can’t do anything on it.

Next step ahead

Now as I still learning to expand my knowledge at the product, I am taking an online course at Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) because they have experts and community in UX. They have a special learning path if you don’t know what course should be taken first. They also said that their course and certificate are industry recognized. Maybe their arguments are legitimate because their assignment is very sophisticated and scored by a human. So, after you do some essays or project, you have to wait 1-2 weeks until their grade your tasks.

Fig 3. Learning path for some role at IDF (https://interaction-design.org).

I also learning Agile Methodologies deeper as I have learned this before at my previous company and university but still confused with Waterfall Methodologies. Later I planned to learn Data Science to master my knowledge in product and be a data-driven Product Manager.

My advice if you want to start career as a Product Manager

Once my senior said, the Product Manager that comes from tech or engineering mostly started as a Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer. The one comes from business mostly as Analyst at Data or Business. The one comes from UX mostly UX Researcher (UxR) or UX Designer (UxD).

But it’s not closed to only that role, if you are willing to work with all those three areas, you are welcome to start a career as Product Manager. If you are a fresh graduate from computer science, information systems, engineering, or stem school many roles are open to you in a tech company. But if you are from a business school you could apply as an analyst or researcher. And if you are from psychology or sociology school, the UX field is vastly open because of the user in the consumer-facing product is number one.