A New Journey as a Product Manager

by Marcos Ortiz, Marcos Ortiz Valmaseda

New journey: I was promoted to Product Manager

I’m very happy today, because the management team of the Development Center (Center of Technologies for Data Management) where I work in the University of Information Sciences, picked me like Product Manager for two important products in the Center. SIMPLY AWESOME !!!

First Product? Stealth-mode

Did I say two? Yes, two products. The first one came to light from an old idea that I wrote when I was an ungraduated in my 4th year in the University. This product is in stealth mode today, so, I just want to share with you a short idea: this product will disrupt the Data monitoring business. I’m proud of the development process until now carried out for one of my teams: Thank you, guys, you are really awesome, I’m proud for the opportunity to work with you.

But, you should be wondering which are my main responsibilities for this first product. Ok, here it’s the list:

  • Customer engagement
  • Product Development
  • Marketing strategy Planing
  • Business Development
  • Feature Definition and Priorization

In short? Be the voice of the product in front of customers, potential customers, executives, etc; but, not just that, I love to touch with my hand the process of features inclusion and development, priorizing according to our customers. Is not awesome?

Second Product? Helping to change its direction

The second product which I’m involved like Product Manager is a Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software based on RedMine, the Project Management system based on Ruby on Rails. This project is for a private client, so, I can’t reveal anything more.

Changing its direction? Let me explain you. When I saw this product for first time, its rich features, and great UI; I said: “This is the perfect platform to enter in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) field”, and the development team looked me thinking: This guy is crazy. I said to them: “Give me 10 minutes of their time, and I will explain you my reasons”. And after they heard me, they understood my points, and said: “OK. But How we enter in the SaaS industry?”. And in that point, I gave to them some points how to do this transition.

My boss was there, listening all the technical and business development discussions; and after hear all points very carefully; he asked to the development team if they wanted me like his Product Manager? and they answered: “Yes, he has a completed vision of all this, so, we need him here”. I was in shock, because, I was the Software Architect of another product (the first product that I talked already) with a completed different technology stack (the first product uses Python, Django, RabbitMQ, MongoDB, D3.js, Twitter’s Bootstrap, Nginx, Gunicorn, and many more good pieces of technology); and they said to me: “You worked with Rails, so, working with RedMine is the same thing, and besides, you have the big picture of all this; so, again, we need you here”. So, I accepted the challenge, and my boss gave me green light for participate in both products like Product Manager.

Some resources to become in a better Product Manager

There are many people that I admire which are Product Managers on its respective companies, and if you follow their work, you can become in a better Product Manager. Some of them are:

  • Craig McLuckie (Lead Product Manager for Google Compute Engine at Google)
  • Ari Feldman (Business Product Manager for Google Doubleclick Ad Exchanger at Google)
  • Ken Norton (VP, Products at JotSpot). He created a great essay for Product Management
  • Marissa Mayer (current Yahoo! CEO). I put to Marissa because she invented the Associate Product Manager (APM) program when she was working at Google. It was an incredible way to atrack top talends to Google. Read more here

Resources?

If you have some more, just send them to me, and I will be glad to add them to this list.

Final Thoughts

Working like Product Manager can be tricky or awesome, my final advice: You have to love the product which is under your management. If you don’t enjoy everyday to work with the product, please change your responsibility, and give it to another Product Manager that truly believe on it. I wrote the first version of the first product, so is like my baby; and the second gave me the opportunity to put in the table a great combination of my technical and soft skills, so, I’m really enjoying my daily work. Thanks a lot for your time to read this.

Happy Releasing !!! Marcos Luis Ortíz Valmaseda about.me/marcosortiz @marcosluis2186