What’s your concern?

What keeps you concernsawake at night? what is one thing that keeps you on your toes?. The answer to this question is probably the core tenet of your profile and also your  organization’s expectation from you. It is good to know the answer to this question since it also helps in prioritizing your tasks at work. Here are some replies that I often to get to listen.

  1. too many bugs towards the tail end of the release
  2. long backlog list, I have too many features to add to the product
  3. competition, losing too many orders to them
  4. scope creeps
  5. over demanding stake holders
  6. Unreasonable customer demands
  7. opportunities  in market place
  8. too much interference from top management
  9. product road map
  10. …..many more

The answer to this question is important for you. Should this concern be your top focus? Is this concern taking away crucial hours from your planned strategic work, if so you are prone to spend significant amount of your time in coming days doing firefighting. Spend sometime, to begin with may be every week to get answer to this question. List down your top concerns and be sure you have strategic plan for concerns that are your priorities and permanent alternate solutions for concerns that are not part on top of your to-do / KRA list.

@mathurabhay

Winning trust – 101 of starting to manage a product

On Dec 9, 1914, Thomas Alva Edison‘s manufacturing unit was razed by a major fire destroying much of his work. When asked, he said “I am 67, but I am not too old to make a fresh start”. Edison and The BulbNot as serious as Edison’s situation, but I feel that the “Fresh Start” situation is very evident when a Product Manager moves to a new company / new domain, or when a person moves to a new city or country in search of a job.

The people are new, the environment feels hostile and cultural practices are different. The previous good will and clout that you held no longer apply here. The best part is that your mistakes from the previous place are not there too. It is a reboot of sorts. You can start afresh. It is the perfect time to shrug off some old practices that you were not happy with  earlier. Since you do not have much of a reputation or a baggage, you have enough liberty to experiment with yourself. Continue reading

Product Mantra: You are Unique

“You are Unique” is the Mantra of motivation, confidence building and getting convinced that “Yes, I can do this”

Let me start with a confession. This product mantra “You are unique” is borrowed from / influenced by the title of a book authored by the most popular president of India, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. This book hit the stands a few weeks backs and is already one of the most sought after books in the Indian Market. This book is already in its second print and for sure several more will follow.

{ order this book: Flipkart, Publishers: Punya Publishing}

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