Abstracts from an interview of a candidate for the post of
product manager. Feel like hiring him, though not after my manager gave me
staring looks on this candidate. Interesting interview conversation though.
Your experience is
largely into Project Management. What convinced you to change your career path?
Yes – I have done project management for 8 years now and I
happened to visit product camp in Bangalore, I guess it’s called pcampblr after
which I thought it was good to be in something less pressing job. So I requested
my VP and they agreed to move me to Product Management department. So for over last
one year or more I am doing product management for the same product that I
managed as Project Manager.
Interesting , though
not fully convinced. And you are liking the job?
Yes – I am.
How different is it
from project management?
Well somewhat. As project manager I was involved in full
deliverable cycle, now I just author requirements, explain them to engineering
and then I am busy attending customer calls and sales calls and escalation
calls.
So you do not
actually participate in engineering process?
Occasionally I join bug reviews and answer mails from
engineering.
What’s the most
interesting part of your profile?
I learned this at pcamp that product managers are owner of
product something like CEO of product line they manage. I like to be a CEO
someday and really feel I am one right now for my product line.
Interesting and what
is one thing that you would like to change about product management?
I read lot on Product Management on web, blogs to be
precise. Really feel that the role of product manager is not understood by
people across the community.
Oh! Wow. Which blogs
do you read?
Many, I remember few though. onproductmanagement.net, crankypm.com,
blackbolt, the rich mironov and few more.
And what’s so
confusing about the job?
I see many people drawing the circles overlapping like that
in Venn-diagram, circles are marked sales, executive, engineering and the
overlapping area is Product Management. And then there are circles which has
Engineering, UX team and marketing and overlapping areas is Product Management.
Are product managers just in those overlapping areas? I thing we have our own
circle, part of which is overlapped with engineering, part with sales, part
with strategy and part with project management. We are lot more than those
overlapping areas.
Interesting thoughts.
Let me understand how do you prioritize features and bugs for engineering? How does
your prioritization matrix looks like?
Nothing rocket science in it. Do what sales and customer
support is most cribbing for, rest designing matrix and putting weights against
each item is like waste of time. Actually we never get a chance to think so
much. On most occasions sales people would have already committed something on
behalf of the organizations and then all department heads come running to us
and I am left with no option but to get that feature or bug fix deliver in
current release or worst case in patch release. It never goes to next release,
all project planning does not hold good here.
I thought you wanted
to be a CEO and learn how to negotiate on such critical things.
As a CEO I would rather prefer to focus more on business
strategy, board of directors and mergers rather worry about what features goes
in when. I thing I am doing right by not putting lots of time on which feature
and when.
Good. So why are you
looking for a change now? You are just little over a year’s experience in Product
Management, maybe you may want to continue and get some real good insight of
the role and then plan to move on.
I guess it will not help. Product managers job is great and
if I stay back I will just repeat my experience. I rather move on and
understand different products and business models before applying for a CEO’s
post. Staying for long on a job as product manager will not help me grow
faster, after all release after release its same stuff.
Great. Have you
worked in agile methodology.
Yes and I like agile.
What’s the best part
of agile?
I do bare minimal paper work, attend scrums as and when
required which allows me to focus on customer care and sales meet, where I
spend my most time. Agile really makes me free of unwanted silly documentation.
Beyond this, it’s just another way of saying engineers, ‘Please deliver it fast
and good’.
Good. Do you have any
questions for me.
None. I always have answers to questions and never let any
question remain open for long for others to answer.
Thanks for your time. We will get back to you.
