This past summer, I spent my time as a product management intern at a legal AI company based out of Chicago. I had a blast. I enjoyed the opportunity of creating an entirely new product from start to finish, however, I was noticing that I did not have exposure to many transferable product management skills. For example, I wasn’t writing any spec sheets or attending any retrospectives or – you name it. So, I decided to take this class with the hope of learning more about these transferable skills so that in my next PM internship, I could utilize them.
In this class, the most useful exercise was definitely the project. While the lecturers and guest speakers were definitely very informative and helpful on their real life experiences and unique decision-making situations as diverse PMs, working through the project was definitely a way to implement what I was learning in class. For example, I was not a big fan of the idea that I ended up working on. However, I noticed that this was nothing but a challenge that I could approach with conflict-resolution tactics and a more open mind – both things I had learned in class. I felt that the space that we were entering was a very saturated one (and it is), so this was not a problem worth solving. But, then I realized the unsolved problems in this domain and – as a group – thought of creative ways of how we could differentiate ourselves. This led to a fulfilling experience. In the future, I’m sure I will be able to realize exactly what soft skills I picked up in this class – since it is difficult to do a full, conscious diagnosis right now. That is, I may notice different problem-solving tactics and ways of communicating more effectively (with respect to my previous group works) in my next team project, and appreciate them more.
If we had additional time, I would definitely spend more energy on fulfilling rides. For example, we did a lot of surveying of prospective riders and drivers. However, instead of building a fancier algorithm, I would be interested in further understanding the use-cases of our uses. Despite the surveys, we were only able to fulfill so many rides and collect a limited amount of user feedback. Therefore, if I had more time, I would look at the user feedback from a much higher number of rides and refine the product to further convince myself that our business model is feasible/generalizable to other, similar geographies.
