Vikas Choudhry

Attended an insightful session at NASSCOM Future Forge 2024 on Conscious Design Choices by Conscious Patterns Team. Check out this blog highlighting 12 distinct deceptive patterns in UX based on ASCI and Department of Consumer Affairs guidelines. Hope this blog helps a lot of Product, Design & Engineering Team to take conscious calls to differentiate between "Ethical vs Deceptive Design Patterns in UX" [Link to the blog] (https://lnkd.in/gZJGTVqu) #UXDesign #ProductEngineering #NASSCOMFutureForge2024

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First day at the Product-led Summit was packed with insightful sessions, panel discussion and roundtable! Got opportunity to be part of the roundtable led by Dan Olsen . Can't wait to read his book! #productledsummit #alliance #productmanagement #productledculture

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DIY Van Build vs Microservices vs Chief Slowdown Officer Building a DIY van is a lot like building a house at first. But one day, once you're on the road, you realize it’s nearly impossible to hire a contractor to fix mistakes on a weekend in the middle of nowhere. The choices you make during the build can have significant consequences, especially when dealing with features involving fuel, water, electrical systems, and safety. In van builds, as in software development, breaking down your needs into smaller, manageable decisions (similar to microservices) allows for simplicity and flexibility. In the video below, I mounted the diesel heater in the engine bay. The decision not to permanently install the diesel heater inside the van and drill holes through the floor had several benefits: diesel fumes out of the van; easy replacement and cleaning; improved safety without running fuel lines inside the van. The onboard air compressor is mounted next to the diesel heater but can be removed for use elsewhere, adding to its versatility. This version of the van is a prototype (1/N). The common belief is that during prototyping or creating a proof of concept (POC), you need to make quick decisions to Get Stuff Done (GSD). While the value of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is clear, it's not always the best approach. The alternative? Maximum Viable Options (MVO). MVO doesn’t mean getting bogged down in analysis paralysis or moving too slowly—it means being deliberate. Think of yourself as the Chief Slowdown Officer (https://lnkd.in/gN42uwfN, @ 1 min mark). One of the hardest aspects of a van build is the electrical system. By taking time and delaying this part of the build as long as possible, I was able to visualize the wiring diagram repeatedly and virtually test the wiring and electrical flow. When I finally started building, it went so quickly over a single weekend that I thought I had made a mistake. But, channeling the Chief Slowdown Officer mindset, I didn’t turn the system on immediately. Instead, it went through a review and certification process. This careful, deliberate approach made supporting the system easy. Being a Chief Slowdown Officer is similar to how athletes—like pro basketball players or golfers—slow down and visualize the shot before committing to it. This is a powerful technique for architects and engineers. If you can slow down and visualize the architecture and dependency graph of everything you build, then OpenAI has no chance. At least, not yet. More on that later. Van facts: 400W solar panels, 5kWh battery bank, bi-directional charging with the van’s battery/alternator, 20-gallon fresh water tank, 16-gallon remotely dischargeable grey water tank, a power-assisted bed lift, 8,000 BTU air conditioner, onboard air compressor, heated floor, walk through shower, bio waste disposal...

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The travel through the past month across the globe and meeting my colleagues for fruitful interactions just put me off from my "sharing routine"! Routines are important and getting back to them is even more important !!! Take it as a tip and remind yourself today, did you miss a heartbeat on something that keeps you happy and satisfied? Ok ! While the readers ponder through that .. how about another leadership tip # 6 on my count ... Today it is about executive presence and how employees at any level can develop this important trait throughout their careers. Executive presence can not only lead to promotions and professional advancement but can also inspire others and increase workplace productivity. There may be contrarian views on this, I acknowledge upfront but I think if you want to leverage the system then you need to develop this important skill to create influence! Happy reading http://bit.ly/3YoMOci #leadership #skills #management

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A powerful team is never just a collection of individuals. There is extraordinary value in connections and relationships that are built over time. But how do you quantify these nuanced and dynamic traits? Here are some ideas: ✨ DORA Metrics: While primarily leveraged for assessing software delivery performance, DORA Metrics can offer insights into team efficiency and collaboration. Metrics like deployment frequency and lead time for changes are indirect indicators of how well a team operates together. 🌟 Net Promoter Score (NPS): Going beyond customer satisfaction, internally, NPS can be adapted to gauge team members' satisfaction and willingness to recommend their team to others. It captures engagement, morale, and overall sentiment within the team. ♻️ Feedback loops: How often is the team giving feedback to others? Tracking data points like these over time, and especially showing how changing the team impacts the data can tell a compelling story. It might give a clear voice to a nuanced understanding of the impact of changing the team when there are concerns for doing so. As a leader what metrics do you track to help you understand how change impacts a team?

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Exciting Announcement! 🌟 Join me for a YouTube Live session on "Leveling Up: Navigating Your Product Management Career." 📅 Date: Sat, 13July,2024 🕒 Time: 7 PM, IST 📍 Where: https://lnkd.in/gMC4wi34 Are you a budding Product Manager looking to climb the career ladder or an experienced PM ready to take your career to new heights? This live session is for you! What I plan to cover: - PM career roadmap: From Associate to Director and beyond - Essential skills at each career stage - Navigating common career challenges - Q&A Whether you're just starting out or aiming for that leadership role, don't miss this opportunity to supercharge your PM career! Set a reminder now and come prepared with your questions! #ProductManagement #CareerGrowth #TechCareers #YouTubeLive See you there! 🚀

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Why are we seeing a lot of folks 'wanting' to transition into Product Management? I think there are three fundamental reasons (apart from the demand/opportunity dynamics) 1. It 'seems' Easy since there isn't a fundamental hard- skill mastery required which makes this appealing to folks from tech, business, performance marketing etc. To add to this, almost everyone rates themselves very highly on customer empathy and soft skills (which is more often than not far away from reality) 2. Unlike in Sales/Bizdev/Category or Account Management where success or failure is immediately measurable, the consequences of failure in Product is not immediate. This helps the average resources survive for longer gestation periods. 3. The attribution of failure is generally not personal. This gets pushed to either other internal teams or external reasons. I also think that the typical CV and interview templatization has massively amplified the current appeal. My only point here is - Whatever role one is in, just solve the stakeholder problems honestly and you'll glide to the top! #RandomWeekendMusings

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A lot of product organizations are fussy about PMs having some tech experience, some design taste. A large number of PM interview templates handle this too. In the same vein however, developers are not expected to have a sense of business which in a lot of cases becomes the reason for rework/re-release. The same is extendable to UX designers who take a hard stance on creativity trading off the business requirements. In an ideal product org, while not generally seen, all folks should be capable of wearing multiple secondary hats. And all the 3 streams should spend time on user research! #RandomWeekendMusings

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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.

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I recently took Shreyas Doshi’s Product Sense course which challenged my perspectives about Product Sense. A few insights that stuck with me: - Great customer segmentation beats a thousand strategy meetings. - Strategy = creative thinking. Frameworks help, but your thinking quality defines success. - No process can replace sharp, intentional thinking. This course is a must for anyone passionate about building impactful products. Thanks, Shreyas Doshi, for challenging us to raise the bar on our thinking! 🙌 #ProductManagement #ProductSense #ThinkBetter #CustomerFirst Link to the course: https://lnkd.in/gTP3UnwZ

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If you dislike Scrum because you perceive it to be dogmatic, or inflexible, maybe this could help. As early as 1986, this critically influential article defined 6 characteristics they observed with successful companies. "From interviews with organization members from the CEO to young engineers, we learned that leading companies show six characteristics in managing their new product development processes: 1 Built-in instability 2 Self-organizing project teams 3 Overlapping development phases 4 "Multilearning" 5 Subtle control 6 Organizational transfer of learning These characteristics are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Each element, by itself, does not bring about speed and flexibility. But taken as a whole, the characteristics can produce a powerful new set of dynamics that will make a difference". Which makes sense. Subtle control isn't good or bad on its own. Instability most often is a negative thing, in our perception. The combination of these factors leads to innovation. A stable environment doesn't encourage innovation to beat the competition. So, if you take one out, e.g. instability, everything else becomes less valuable. What's the point of Self-organization when things are stable? What's the point of the rest of the parts if direct "command & control" structure is applied onto it? I know we are often excited by the "shiny new thing", but humanity has figured this out very long ago, and Scrum isn't a fad of Agile Coaches, but a useful metaphor for A WAY (not THE WAY) of building new products successfully that's been battle-tested for decades, albeit, it's always empirical, always adjusted for context, filling the multitude of gaps, and not a "cure-all".

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Harness the power of AI to streamline your workflow, boost productivity, and drive better results. Get started with GenAI today and take your product management game to the next level! 💡 #Chisel #GenAI #ProductManagement #SaaS #Innovation

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A team that ideates together thrives! How often do you see product managers and strategy & ops professionals getting caught up in day-to-day operations, leaving strategy and innovation on the backburner? Reflecting on my career, some of the most exciting moments have been those when managers and stakeholders stepped away from business as usual to brainstorm the next big thing. Recently, engaging in a fun late-night AI thread, I shared ideas on potential products, their impact, and how they could revolutionize the Walmart experience. We probably thought we were nuts imagining new ways to augment our AI experiences for our associates - well past midnight. But guess what, a week down the line, we see a meeting in our calendars to quite “seriously” discuss those ideas & vision. That’s the fun part about Product management. It is about more than just documentation, tasks and jira updates. It's about complimenting the day to day operations with vision, strategy, ideation, and roadmap management. How often do you ideate? #ProductManagement #Innovation #Ideation #Strategy #Walmart

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Co-location strikes back! Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy just announced that Amazon's 1.5 million-plus employees must return to the office five days per week starting January 2. Desk assignments are back, too. "We've observed that it's easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing is simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another," Jassy said. #agile #learning #facetofacecommunication https://lnkd.in/dNBdQbF8

Innovation is often seen as the domain of tech leaders or artists, but on Diwali, I encourage everyone—students, artists, employees, regardless of background—to embrace innovation fearlessly, without hesitation over what’s right or wrong. As a leader, I urge my team to push boundaries, go the extra mile, and learn from mistakes. This "try without fear" mindset is essential for achieving meaningful progress. Too often, people are held back by the fear of failure or judgment, which stops them from even beginning. Yet in tech and life, innovation thrives on trial, error, and learning. At our organization, this philosophy fuels innovation not just in products but also in optimizing processes and systems. It enables us to create streamlined operations across departments, moving beyond repetitive tasks to make smarter, more effective decisions. Embracing a culture of calculated risk and learning is the true pathway to progress, and I encourage all to adopt this Diwali spirit of fearless creativity and growth. #Innovation #Techinnovation #growthmindset #techleaders #startupindia #technologyleaders #cloudcomputing #effectivedecisionmaking

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As I've progressed in my career, I've come to recognize that success is often a collective metric rather than individual. It's the result of collaboration - a sum of efforts. But, what does good collaboration entail? For me, it comprises four key ingredients: - Sharing Success: Acknowledging the human inclination towards self-recognition, being ready to attribute success to others is vital. Without this, collaboration loses its essence over time. - Appreciation: In the realm of collaboration, openly appreciating the efforts of others is crucial. Recognition fuels motivation and fosters growth. - Support in Adversity: True collaborators don't abandon ship when things go awry. They display empathy, taking ownership with a growth mindset. Adversity reveals the strength of collaboration. - Common Goal Alignment: Recognizing individual differences and fluctuations in motivation, effective collaborators drive each other towards shared objectives for collective triumph. Success is not a solitary journey but a collaborative effort. Cultivating these elements in collaboration is key to achieving collective success. Image Credit: https://www.avocor.com/

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I have never considered the importance of minimizing layers and how that could maximize communication. While I have no management plans, I will broaden my audience when designing solutions for technical problems. Even if the additional person doesn’t help solve this problem, the learnings gained may enable them to solve the next problem.

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I believe that the Product mindset goes beyond building products. Here are a few Product Management ideas from my own experience that apply to effective leadership. 1. Identifying the north-star metric: It's the single most important measurement of success. North-star metrics, when right, have the power to bring everything together: aligning your vision, strategy, and quarterly roadmap; guiding efficient decision-making; creating focus; and bringing clarity of purpose. They serve as a leading indicator of business success. North-star metrics are often simple to understand but aren’t simplistic. Their depth is revealed in their 2nd and 3rd order implications. 2. Focusing on inputs vs. outputs: In a system, inputs are what you control and outputs are what you get as a result. You need an output orientation to know where you need to go but that’s just the starting point. You must work out the inputs and have goals around them. Then, spend most of your time and energy in the input world. If your inputs are right, the output will take care of itself. If not, you change the inputs. 3. Making decisions: Know that every decision doesn't require the same amount of deliberation. There are decisions that need to be carefully analyzed, over an extended period of time, because the cost of undoing them is high. But for others, when decisions can be easily changed (with very little cost), it’s always better to oversimplify than under-simplify. It's important to remember that a good amount of worry is caused by not realizing the difference between what needs to be approximately correct vs. precisely correct. 4. Managing uncertainty: In physics, velocity is a vector combining two entities: speed and direction. As a leader, it’s tempting to look too far ahead and make plans to move with speed– but that doesn’t always work, especially if you’re operating in an environment of high uncertainty. Don’t prioritize speed over finding the right direction to achieve your vision. It might not always be what you thought initially. Really good product work begins with a hypothesis, but also real open-mindedness to what you might find on the other side as you pursue the hypothesis. When uncertainty is high, measure progress in terms of finding new information – both positive and negative. Finding what doesn’t work is valuable information as well. Think in terms of experiments and the cost (time, resources) of doing them. Then, work to reduce the cost. Iterate and learn. When you're confident that you have found the right direction, put the pedal to the metal. 5. Getting things done: Strategy doesn’t differentiate great from good, execution does. Effective product management combines a bias for action with reflection and observation without preconception. It relies on first-principles thinking and analysis to guide prioritization. To do it right, you need a deep awareness of what’s important and a sharp feedback loop with reality.

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