All You Need To Know About Product Management - Live Chat With An IIM Bangalore Student - Online Courses to Learn Skills for your Job

puja.bardhan16

Good Evening

12:22 PM

puja.bardhan16

I shall begin by introducing myself. I am Puja Bardhan, PGP student from IIM Bangalore.

12:32 PM

puja.bardhan16

I interned with Microsoft in a product management role during the summers.

12:32 PM

puja.bardhan16

Please post any questions that you might have regarding Product Management.

12:32 PM

burhanuddin jari

Hi Could you please share about your internship experience with Microsoft in brief? Thanks

12:38 PM

burhanuddin jari

Hi Could you please share about your internship experience with Microsoft in brief? Thanks

12:38 PM

puja.bardhan16

Sure.

12:39 PM

puja.bardhan16

I worked on Cortana. I cannot reveal the exact feature here. But I was given the ownership of the entire feature. I had to begin by selling my concept to the senior PMs. I was given a team which consisted of a Designer, a UX developer and a Back End Developer. I had to communicate my feature requirements to the team to get the product shipped.

12:42 PM

burhanuddin jari

Do you think the UX developer & the developer worked well with each other? Or there were conflicting issues every now & then between the two? How did you look at that?

12:45 PM

puja.bardhan16

As a PM Intern, I was always asked as to why these features and why not something else. I had to justify why I wanted a particular number of developers.

12:45 PM

burhanuddin jari

Do you think the UX developer & the developer worked well with each other? Or there were conflicting issues every now & then between the two? How did you look at that?

12:45 PM

puja.bardhan16

In my case, the UX Developers and Back End Developers did not have any conflicting situations but the Designers generally tend to disagree with the PMs and developers, is what I understood from my seniors.

12:48 PM

Devarshi Patel

How did you handle the conflicts with in the team?

12:48 PM

puja.bardhan16

I did have to negotiate on features vs developer's time. As in which features could be rolled out soon and how much developer's time it would consume.

12:49 PM

Devarshi Patel

What were the technical issues you faced as a PM? Is understanding the technologies important for a PM?

12:50 PM

Devarshi Patel

How did you handle the conflicts with in the team?

12:48 PM

puja.bardhan16

My approach was simple. I would set up meetings twice in a week and discuss the features and the timeline to complete it. Sometimes, the team members would disagree among themselves. But being an intern, I would just divert their attention to the project at hand as I only had 2 months.

12:54 PM

Devarshi Patel

What were the technical issues you faced as a PM? Is understanding the technologies important for a PM?

12:50 PM

puja.bardhan16

It is not mandatory to have deep technical knowledge for a PM. I have met two kinds of PMs - one who is very good technically and would sometimes help the developers code and the other who would conceptualize so well that developers would easily be able to visualize the requirement and end goal. I have studied Computer Science and Engineering, so I did have an advantage as I was able to write short snippets of code just for the developers to get a better understanding of what I want the feature to be like.

12:58 PM

Ankit Doshi

Hi Puja, What can someone in Business school do at this point to be a good PM if he/she has a commerce background?

01:01 PM

puja.bardhan16

I would suggest that you read 'Cracking the PM Interview' by McDowell and Bavaro. It is a must if you are preparing for the PM role.

01:02 PM

Devarshi Patel

Which SDLC method did you follow for a project with timeline of 2 months?

01:03 PM

Ankit Doshi

Any courses that you suggest online or otherwise?

01:03 PM

Ankit Doshi

Hi Puja, What can someone in Business school do at this point to be a good PM if he/she has a commerce background?

01:01 PM

puja.bardhan16

Generally, tech companies have an engineering degree as a requirement for PM. For Microsoft, it wasn't necessary to be a computer engineer. But, with commerce background, one can go for product management in FMCG companies where it's called brand management as far as I understand.

01:06 PM

Devarshi Patel

Which SDLC method did you follow for a project with timeline of 2 months?

01:03 PM

puja.bardhan16

Honestly, all that we studied Waterfall and Agile models, I didn't have any such framework in mind during the internship. I sketched out different modules that were interrelated and started off with the basic platform. I kept the first month to reiterate if necessary and made a lock in at the end of the month. My plans for the 2nd month was to keep adding new features to enhance the base.

01:11 PM

Ankit Doshi

How much does a Product Manager earn after 3-4 years in the industry? Annual Salary?

01:12 PM

Ankit Doshi

Any courses that you suggest online or otherwise?

01:03 PM

puja.bardhan16

Like I mentioned above 'Cracking the PM Interview' is very important. I also went through 'Hooked' by Nir Eyal and 'Steve Jobs' by Walter Isaacson.

01:14 PM

Ankit Doshi

How much does a Product Manager earn after 3-4 years in the industry? Annual Salary?

01:12 PM

puja.bardhan16

I don't actually know about the income after 3-4 years into the industry. But, entry level salary for a top tier MBA student is Rs. 22+ Lac CTC based on previous work experience.

01:17 PM

puja.bardhan16

Is there any other doubt that I maybe able to help you with?

01:22 PM

puja.bardhan16

For PM, you need to have an open mind so that you can visualize features which might be common but gone unnoticed. You need to take a minimalist approach and learn the tradeoff between features and investment. Though it is an everyday marketing phrase but I will still repeat that you need to know what customer want.

01:27 PM

puja.bardhan16

If there are no more questions, I would close this Konversation. Thank you for joining and it was a pleasure to answer your questions.

01:29 PM