Individual Reflection

When I first joined CS177, I didn’t have a good sense of what the role of a product manager entailed. I had heard it involved wearing many hats and moving from one problem to another, but I had no clear idea what those problems looked like or how a PM fit into a larger team. I joined this class because I was drawn to the idea of product management and helping move a team forward from the ideation stage to creating an actual MVP.

I loved being able to work with my team this quarter on our project. As we did our needfinding and experience prototypes, compiled our project milestones, and crafted our prototypes, we were all so supportive of one another; it felt easy and natural to ask for help when needed, talk through plans and deliverables, and use our complementary strengths to contribute to a cohesive larger project. I especially enjoyed creating the user storymap and talking through product assumptions together, and I felt the group discussions yielded many surprising insights that I would never have come up with on my own. I found that I was able to hone my skills in user empathy and needfinding as well as pick up some new engineering frameworks by building out a VSCode extension for our implementation prototype.

From this class, I’ve learned a lot about what product management looks and feels like on a day-to-day basis as well as the skills needed to be a good PM. I really appreciated the opportunity to hear about Christina’s experiences as a PM and founder and learn from guest speakers in industry as well, and I think these stories have given me a much clearer idea about what careers in product can be. This class has made my interest in product management much more concrete, and I’ve realized that I truly enjoy the ability to exist at the boundaries of many different roles. I love stepping in wherever I’m needed, considering the business aspects of product decisions, helping set a long-term vision, and watching that vision come to life.

If we had more time, I would have liked explore the process of raising capital or building support for a product idea. I think it would be incredibly interesting to see the similarities and differences between these two processes in a startup vs a larger organization.