Swarnam Dash

I recently took Shreyas Doshi's product sense course where we learned the secret to building winning products: There are no secrets Most of us are doing it wrong :D But you can get much, much better at it than you realized If you learn to think correctly The course was dense, intense, and I learned more in 30 hours than in many years of doing product. Fundamentally it taught me what it means to treat making correct product decisions as an actual skill. But you have to jump in the pool and swim - there's no framework that can do it for you. Perfect for product people, founders (there were several great ones in my cohort) and senior Engineers https://lnkd.in/e8KDhv5c

10

After many years in product I finally decided to take my first, and probably last, "PM course": Shreyas Doshi's Product Sense course: https://lnkd.in/g6Gm9YzU Why my last? I don't think I'll ever need to take another course after this. He asked our honest take, so here's mine: The premise of a PM course always felt ironic to me because doing product in theory is never *remotely close* to doing product in practice. Well, this is finally the course that is built for, and built by, product in practice. Name a product concept that you've banged your head against the wall trying to put into practice (I'll name a few: Product Sense, Product Strategy, Product Vision). You've already read 5 books, 10 medium articles, and listened to 12 podcasts, and still feel like doing it yourself is like grabbing water. Every one of those concepts (and more) has finally been decomposed, distilled, and packaged into something that can compare to working directly with a world-class product leader yourself. Do yourself a favor and take this course, there is nothing remotely close to it that I'm aware of in existence. Also: you will laugh - guarantee you'll experience at least 1 moment of catharsis as Shreyas Doshi skewers some aspect of the tech industry and our experience as product people within it.

40

3 Comments

Curious about measuring the true impact of your data team's work? 🌟 Check out productindata.com latest blog on measuring data team performance through key metrics like time, money, risks, and satisfaction. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gPecBe3d #DataAnalytics #ProductManagement #BusinessGrowth #Leadership #DataDriven #DataScience #AI #BigData #TechInnovation #KPI #OKR #DataStrategy #MachineLearning #BusinessIntelligence #DataManagement #DigitalTransformation #DataOps #Innovation #TechTrends #DataVisualization #PredictiveAnalytics #DataLeadership #CloudComputing #DataQuality #Analytics #EnterpriseData

5

2 Comments

Product management is like being a Bollywood director. You gotta write the script, pick the perfect cast, and make sure the movie leaves everyone saying 'Paisa vasool!' Product gets the box office success, the actors get the fame...well, maybe next film! #productmanagement #productmanager #productstrategy #madeinindia #indianstartups #marketingchai #uxindia #productfun #pmlife #humor #productmemes

2

Super excited to inform you all that Prashanth H Southekal, PhD, MBA, Principal Research Scientist at D2A2 will be sharring his thoughts on #data , #analytics and #AI on November 8th in the InsightJam.com session The session is called - ANALYTICS 2025: IGNORE THESE TRENDS AT YOUR PERIL. Registration in the comments to watch live on #InsightJam or on-demand. 👇

3

1 Comment

"A product roadmap is like a treasure map for pirates... except the X usually marks the spot where your initial launch date went to die." - Author Unknown #productmanagement #productmanager #productdiscovery #userresearch #customerneeds #problemsolving #innovation #humor #marketing #development #productlaunch #entrepreneur #customercentric #MVP #agile #ux #designthinking #learnontiktok #startups

2

Launching an MVP isn't the best first step in product validation. Sachin Rekhi pushes us to consider alternatives to launching a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to validate new product ideas. He suggests identifying the riskiest hypothesis related to your product/market fit, such as the problem being addressed, target audience, value proposition, competitive advantage, growth strategy, and business model. Check out his post: https://lnkd.in/gWAZsNuN Once identified, he recommends selecting a targeted validation technique that addresses the specific risk. → Problem to Solve - Do you worry that the problem you're addressing might not be significant enough for your customers? → Target Audience - Are you concerned that your target audience may not be the ideal match for your solution? → Value Proposition - Do you doubt whether your solution effectively addresses your customers' needs? → Competitive Advantage - Are you unsure if your solution substantially improves over existing alternatives? → Growth Strategy - Are you uncertain how to effectively draw enough of your target customers to your product? → Business Model - Do you doubt whether customers will pay for your product? These techniques let you test your hypothesis before your product is even built, minimizing the risks and costs of making changes later. Helio is excellent for gaining insights into each method and allows an audience to validate your ideas quickly. Thanks for the inspiration Sachin! #uxresearch #productdiscovery #marketresearch #productdesign

80

4 Comments

The product lifecycle is like a Bollywood movie: Starts with a bang, full of drama in the middle (bugs!), and ends with everyone wondering if there will be a sequel (new version) or if it's just a one-hit wonder. #productmanagerlife #productmanagement #productmanager #agile #productowner #officehumor #worklifebalance #softwareengineeringhumor #uxhumor #customercentric #productlifecycle #productlaunch #bugs #productdevelopment #newversion #bollywood #softwareengineeringhumor #productmanagerlife

2

Improving your Product Sense Day 2 is a super heavy drug dose on Positioning and Segmentation. Worth its weight in gold! Learning so many strategies with real life examples as well as hands on exercises to correctly segment the products, to help define the Product Market Fit has capped a very busy yet fruitful weekend spent. Thank you so much Shreyas Doshi! I am enlightened today and look forward to leveraging these learnings in my career right away. My next book: Understanding Michael Porter by Joan Magretta, yes 4 times :)

4

Every Product Manager wants to create memorable products, but end up creating complex versions of their original vision which don't get user love. Reason - ignoring fundamental user expectations. Next time if you are in similar situation, evaluate your product on the below 6 core user expectations to avoid getting into this trap: 1. Product Benefit ↳ Is your product solving an important and painful problem for the user? 2. Trust ↳ Is your product reliable and trustworthy in doing what it is supposed to do? 3. Simplicity ↳ Is your product easy to use and understand by the user group it is built for? 4. Delight ↳ Is your product making users feel moments of delight and surprise? 5. Belonging ↳ Does the usage of the product foster a sense of belonging with the product in users' minds? 6. Consistent Experience ↳ Do all the touch-points of user interaction with the product and the company offer the same level of care, trust, and delight? A memorable product does a good job in meeting user expectations for all 6 parameters thus becoming a preferred choice for users. Do share in comments what else you have seen working well for products which you love. #productmanagement

13

"A product manager walks into a bar. Orders a drink. Orders 100 more drinks. Asks the bartender 'why?' This is product discovery." - Author Unknown #productmanagement #productmanager #productdiscovery #userresearch #customerneeds #problemsolving #innovation #humor #marketing #development #productlaunch #entrepreneur #customercentric #MVP #agile #ux #designthinking 

4

ChatGPT as a Companion to PM Interviews and Real-Work I was going to start writing about Product Sense after covering market sizing and guesstimates in the last few posts. But analytical seems like a topic that’s a natural extension of market sizing and guesstimates. Analytical skills aren’t just important for PMs. They are also quite important in adjacent roles — business or product analyst, data scientists, consulting, program management, etc. Every one of these people have to work with data to figure out insights. But the burden of using data to create insights, and translating that insight into the impact lies with product teams. To do that, product team needs to have a deeper understanding of: 1) Defining the metrics : Product dashboards, and defining various levels of metrics in the dashboards; NSMs (north star metrics); Success metrics for a product launch, and guardrail metrics 2) Merging user research and data merge to create powerful insights 3) Root cause analysis of a problem using data, like a metric going down (or up) 4) Creating a plan to move a metric The above skills are in the increasing order of complexity. For example, item #4 (moving a metric) is something that is the hardest to do among all the others. While PMs require all the skills listed above on the job, when it comes to the interviews, it’s hard to display #2 (merging research and data to create insights). So those questions don’t appear in the interviews. Further, the type of skill tested also changes with levels. At an APM/PM level, you would get more questions around defining metrics (success metrics, NSM, dashboards) and RCA, whereas at an SPM/GPM level, you start getting problems of creating a product strategy to move a metric. We are going to cover these items in the next set of essays. But one of the more interesting things that has happened in the past 1.5 years is large language models (LLMs). And one of the notions I had around analytics is — Analytics is also lot more structured and objective than product sense or strategy interviews, the response of LLMs might be pretty effective here just as it happens in coding. In other words, can we start using these LLMs as a product companion when it comes to analytics? Since ChatGPT is available at your service 24x7, it’s an amazing companion to have. If the answer to the first question is yes, to what extent should we be using them? Should we using them for Interview Prep or Real-work or both? If all these questions excite you, do give a read to today's edition of the newsletter - https://lnkd.in/gd36NcrN

38

1 Comment

When you understand your company's finances well, you make better decisions as a Product Manager. Vishal's answer is to the point - he has truly highlighted factors that can accelerate a PM's career. #productmanagement

243

3 Comments

Are you ready to redefine your role as a Product Manager in the age of AI? 🚀 Transitioning to an AI Product Manager requires embracing new tools and mindsets. Aman Khan from Arize AI shares key insights on how to excel in this evolving field: 🔧 Prototyping with AI: Leverage AI tools like Cursor and Replit to create high-resolution prototypes. Bringing functional mocks to meetings accelerates collaboration and innovation. 📚 Build Your AI Foundation: Understanding machine learning fundamentals is crucial. Resources like YouTube tutorials from experts such as Andrej Karpathy can help you grasp the essentials without needing advanced degrees. 🌟 Develop a Strong Portfolio: Showcase your ability to integrate AI by building and iterating on AI-driven products. Demonstrating hands-on projects sets you apart in the competitive landscape. 💡 Focus on Solving Problems: Instead of replicating existing AI solutions, identify unique customer problems and tailor AI tools to address them effectively. This approach ensures your products deliver genuine value. 🤝 Stay Curious and Collaborative: Participate in hackathons and engage with cross-functional teams to explore innovative AI applications. Continuous learning and teamwork drive success. 🎯 Measure Impact with AI Metrics: Establish clear metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of AI integrations. Understanding how AI contributes to business goals is essential for sustained growth. Aman emphasizes that being an AI PM means constantly iterating and staying adaptable as AI technology rapidly evolves. Embrace the journey, stay curious, and focus on delivering meaningful solutions. Want to dive deeper into becoming a successful AI Product Manager? Check out https://lnkd.in/dwKM2C5D #productmanagement #AI #careerdevelopment #techinnovation #AIPM ---- Need help breaking into Product Management or accelerating your PM career? Schedule a free 1-on-1 session with me and let's chat about your goals. Link on my profile. If you enjoyed this post: 1. Follow me for more PM & career content 2. Repost to share with your network

3

Recommendation: Shreyas Doshi’s Product Sense course on Maven. Whether you have 10+ years of product experience or/and have read all books in existence, you will get fresh insights and your thinking and biases will be challenged. It's also a good time because Maven is offering discounts on courses until the end of this week. When you enroll and get the calendar, clear it for a few extra hours for each session because Shreyas will go an extra mile. https://lnkd.in/d4hM4xQF

3

You will see very few successful “product first” software companies serving enterprises but you will see a LOT of successful “sales first” software companies. You can build a world class product but it wont succeed if you dont understand GTM. As product managers , while we need a lot of focus building great products , we need give equal attention to GTM and NO it is not the only responsibility of sales and marketing. I wrote an article a while back explaining how we can do our part in ensuring our product is successful. Even if you have a dedicated product function responsible for this you as product managers should understand distribution if you want to become a successful product leader! Bonus: The article gives you a checklist! If you also love checklist to organize yourselves then do read it!! https://lnkd.in/dqbSEWZ #productmanagement #productstrategy #gotomarket #saas #checklists

7

The "Decoding Design Systems" workshop at Pattern® gave me a rich understanding of how large-scale companies build and maintain cohesive, scalable design systems. With Sachin Gawas and Nikhil Shriman highlighting essential aspects like atomic design structure and modularity, it's clear that creating consistent user experiences across multiple products and regions is no small feat. Their approach, breaking down UI elements into reusable components (atoms, molecules, organisms), aligns with efficient problem-solving, which Nikhil noted is the bulk of UX work. My major takeaways: 1. Atomic Design for Consistency: Breaking interfaces into fundamental building blocks ensures consistency, especially in global markets. This not only builds trust with users but also makes managing the design across multiple countries seamless. 2. Modularity for Efficiency: The modularity aspect is crucial for fast-paced operations, as it allows teams to quickly adapt and scale new features without starting from scratch, ensuring efficiency in both design and development. 3. Accessibility and Scalability: Emphasizing accessibility shows a commitment to inclusive design. Variables also enable scalability, ensuring that design elements can be easily managed across hundreds of components. 4. Documentation for Onboarding: The lack of documentation stood out. Once implemented, this will help new team members and streamline handoffs to developers, reducing errors and increasing efficiency. 5. Global Collaboration: Synchronizing design with your developer UI library is vital for ensuring that distributed teams work from a unified system, maintaining consistent design principles across all locations. As I continue my journey to becoming a UX designer, I’m eager to apply these insights to create more effective and user-centered designs. Thank you to Friends of Figma, Pune, Shivangi C. and everyone involved for an incredible learning experience! 🚀 Glad to have connected with Kimaya Labde and Anjali Reddy! #DesignSystems #UXDesign #UXDesigner #FOFPune #FriendsofFigma

38

2 Comments

When Product Manager has accepted two meetings at the same time. One is the prioritisation that cannot be skipped. And the VP Product joins the other 😀 #aspiringproductmanager #productmanager #productmanagement #humor ~~ If you found this post helpful, reshare ♻️ this and follow me 👉 Nitish Rana for daily content at 𝟭𝟭 𝗔𝗠 & 𝟱:𝟯𝟬 𝗣𝗠 𝗜𝗦𝗧. You should also subscribe to my Newsletter 👉 The Product Leap if you are deciding to move into product role or have just moved.

21

6 Comments