My Reflection on HC Product Management

For the past year, having running my own startup, I have been thrusted to take up the role as product manager for the web platform we are building. I had no formal training on product management, and almost no informal training too for that matter. But to be honest, I didn’t think training didn’t all that matter as I had a natural knack for problem solving. When I joined the first week of class, I thought the class was going to teach me rigid and strict best practices in the industry. Everyday at work I kept thinking that I was improvising too many of the strategies and methods, and I wanted more structure in my life as a product manager. The class also seemed holistic in its approach as it cycles the team members through the product manager, designer, and engineer role.

In the class, I made it a point to keep an open mind and be as inquisitive as I can be so I can do a better job as a product manager for my startup. I also did my best to focus on the process of me learning rather than being too ambitious about the outcome of the project. Not only did I make many mental notes of the frameworks and methods being taught in class, but I also applied a lot of them for the product development process in my startup e.g. user story map, story map, experience prototype, etc. I felt this helped me to do more tests with the class materials outside of the scope of the class – in the hopes to increase learning retention.

In contrast with what I expected to get from the class – there is no rigid structure or smoking-gun-best-practice in product management. A lot of what I learned are first principles about problem solving and human-centered design – which I feel translates better in the numerous and various cases that I will meet as a product manager in my career. I particularly enjoyed the talks on what Matt LeMay writes in his book and how he emphasizes that each company and team is different – do what works best for you.

Given more time, I would have loved to learn more about learning the technicalities of software development and best frameworks or practices to choose tech stacks. I feel that starting off with a strong core of tech knowledge could make or brake the company in the long run and I would have loved to learn from guest speakers who were more on the software side of things.

All-in-all, I think this was an awesome class and I will (continue to) recommend it to fellow student friends.