Before taking this class, I thought this was a class that teaches interview questions like the book “Cracking the PM Interview” does. After a few lectures, I quickly realized this was not that type of class. This class not only teaches a lot of useful product managing skills in the real business world but also teaches us a useful tool kit for professional teamwork. I went through so many stages in building a product in this class and learned so much.
What we did the most was talk with people to learn about their needs. In the beginning, our group wanted to build an app for students to provide and get services from each other such as hair-cut, dog-walking, etc. I thought the idea was very promising because I personally struggle with finding a good hair stylist to cut my hair. I would love to have a trusted peer to cut my hair instead of going to some strange salon to do so. However, I got very different responses when I interviewed potential users about their needs. Turned out that my interviewees didn’t trust the students who they didn’t know, so they didn’t want to get service from them. They also told me that they could just go to their friends for help or find professionals in town. When I discussed the interview findings with other group members, they also reported that their interviewees didn’t show much passion for this project. So we pivoted to the current direction, an online marketplace for student artists to sell their work and build a community. When we interviewed more people about this new direction, our interviewees showed much more interest and need in this project. I learned in this process how to ask the right questions to get what the user really needs and listen to their stories. What’s more, how to spot a lack of need for the product as soon as possible and pivot to something more needed.
I also gained invaluable experience using teamwork techniques and trying to speak up for myself. I had been a people-pleaser in most of the group projects I was in, and was too afraid to communicate my needs and boundaries. However, I learned to discuss that upfront with my teammates in this class. And my teammates were very supportive and accommodating, which was a surprise to me. I didn’t know everyone’s needs could be met in a group. That was very useful to me for any group work in the future.
Besides the knowledge and skills, I learned more about myself in this class. To be very honest, I came into the class believing I wanted to be a product manager. However, I came out thinking that this might not be a good fit for me. The first thing that strikes me about the job of a product manager is the high level of ambiguity that they need to deal with every day. Most of the time, PMs are not told what to do. Rather, they need to figure out their own goals. Although I got more and more comfortable working with ambiguity as the quarter went on, I didn’t want to deal with that more.
If I had more time, I would discuss more with our new group member, Makenna, how she thinks of our product and whether there is anything she would change. That being said, maybe in the future iteration of the class, we can touch upon how to work with group members joining and leaving.
