Product Management Leader | Digital Transformation | Consultant | Instructor | Saudi Resident
Riyadh needs more product leaders to take a step back and educate the local community on the basics of product management before selling ‘Hollywood case studies’ from USA and Europe. Many people have major misunderstandings and misconceptions on the product management role. Time should be given to clarify one misunderstood point at a time for example: 1. What is agile? How much I invest in learning it? Should I take a scrum master qualification? Etc 2. I don’t use data at work, should I start? What metrics should I be tracking? How can I track? 3. What is user discovery? We do interviews like once every 2-3 months, that’s enough right? 4. We don’t really estimate or plan our work. Typically, we don’t have a roll out strategy….we just like to launch. 5. Our engineering and product teams always clash because the requirements are not clear and engineers are just too slow etc etc etc Taking the time and addressing each one of these points one at a time will be far more valuable to the community then hearing fantasy case studies from the west which is a completely different reality. #Riyadh #ProductManagement
One important note here about the case studies, marketing successful case studies from the western countries (here I mean US) would do more harm than good. Product management in the US is mature enough while in the Middle East and particularly in Saudi is still in the infant stages. Another important point aligned with this is culture, culture is different, we can take examples of product management in US vs Europe vs India. Totally different stage of maturity. Thus we see different type of discovery ceremonies, execution, and product strategies.
Muhammed Zaulifqar محمد ذوالفقار very insighful. At Kimolian Academy we are in a mission to empower women to develop these critical PM skills. During the program, these women work in teams to run customer interviews to map out the opportunity space, conduct market research, prioritize opportunities and rapidly validate critical assumptions underpinning their product idea and Go-To-Market strategy. At the end of the program, as a team they present their product vision, Go-To-Market strategy and MVP; more importantly, they go through the steps they followed to get there. You can see their presentations here https://www.youtube.com/@ELENILIALIAMOU/videos
I think it's also important to recognize that product management is really a business role. Companies need to stop looking for PMs who can code just to keep an eye on engineers' work. It feels like they're trying to make up for bad engineering with a super technical PM. While it's great to have a PM who understands tech, they shouldn't be expected to act like a solutions architect. In this process, the actual role of the PM gets forgotten and lost.
I agree 100%, I’ve wanted to do talks on those subjects , foundational type talks
I would urge anyone in the Riyadh product scene (especially budding product managers) to check out Montajat | مُنتجات , a growing community focusing on product, creating a space for people to upskill and knowledge share with fellow industry peers
Appreciate you sharing your perspective on this. Exploring the MENA region these days and deep diving into how the product market is here. I have similar impressions by looking at the surface of things. But as you put it, there will be some change management needed to reap the benefits of the product approach.
Spending time at the beginning to build a solid foundation of required skills reduces misunderstanding and clashes between the teams.
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4moThis is very true. Muhammed Zaulifqar محمد ذوالفقار - things like how to create a great prd. I’ll schedule some posts on these topics on my local fintech newsletter. I’d love for you to take a look at it btw: https://onefs.substack.com/p/15s-to-onboard-heres-the-future-of