Final week, Product College hosted Ravi Shankar Mishra, Head of Product at Zalando for a particular #AskMeAnything session. Ravi spoke about switching from entrepreneurship to Product, his expertise at Amazon, and what he appears to be like for in nice PMs.

Meet Ravi

Ravi Shankar Mishra is at present working because the Head of Product at Zalando. There he leads the PM workforce for funds and danger administration. Earlier than this, he labored as Director of PM at Tata CLiQ the place he led the MarTech workforce as they labored on a wide range of options and the shopper expertise.

He has additionally labored as Head of Product for Amazon’s belief PM workforce in India. He additionally has expertise as an entrepreneur, having based his personal firm, Medinfi Healthcare, which was rated essentially the most engaged healthcare content material website in 2016 and 2017.

Might you elaborate on what it was like switching gears between entrepreneurship to product? What key abilities transferred, and what didn’t? What did you study from the expertise?

I might say your complete Product Growth means of validating the shopper issues, defining options that are differentiated, and measuring affect was one thing very precious. This was very helpful to me as I began my health-tech enterprise after studying these abilities at Amazon. Additionally the method of aligning stakeholders utilizing Press Releases / Often Requested Questions (PR/FAQs) was equally precious as a Founder. Solely distinction being the stakeholders modified from engineering, advertising and marketing, and operations to co-founders and traders.

I realized that many of the stakeholders like to study actual buyer issues, need to get satisfied with information, and are keen to decide to the product / startup imaginative and prescient if you happen to current the entire story which is buyer backwards and validated with related information factors.

Learn subsequent: The Distinction Between Startup PMs & Huge Company PMs

What’s the answer if the utilization of the launched product is beneath the expectation?

I might advocate to analyse the information within the buyer journey and perceive the place the hole exists. It could be even higher to speak to actual prospects and perceive their ache factors.

What qualities are you in search of in your workforce of PMs? What would you say differentiates a terrific PM from a very good one?

I usually search for clear validation of the shopper drawback earlier than constructing the answer, aside from clear definition of success metrics for the product. These two attributes stand out for me in a very good PM and I might recommend to practise this by writing Press Releases / Often Requested Questions (PR/FAQs) on your present product and options that you simply is likely to be engaged on.

For extra on this, learn: Traits of Distinctive Product Managers

What do you recommend for merging firms/merchandise with comparable merchandise however totally different approaches to UX/options? How can we retain options that purchasers have come to like throughout all programs with out making a monster of an software that tries to cater to all customers?

It is a robust state of affairs to be in. Throughout my Amazon days, we had acquired a couple of fin-tech startups and confronted comparable challenges whereas integrating the merchandise. That is usually a time taking course of earlier than the groups and visions align to the top buyer. What would possibly make it sooner is to go to the drafting board and reply primary questions like:

1. Who’s the goal buyer?
2. What’s the buyer drawback we are attempting to unravel?
3. How do we all know the shopper has this drawback?
4. What’s the potential answer (person expertise) for this drawback?
5. How will we measure the success of this answer?

It could be good to maintain this brief at first (1-2 web page max) and use it to drive brainstorming discussions and steadily align everybody to the identical understanding of the issue, answer, and affect.

What’s the distinction between being a Product Supervisor vs a Program Supervisor vs Mission Supervisor?

Thanks for the query. It is a robust one and should fluctuate loads throughout organizations.

Based mostly on my expertise, I might say Product Managers are usually in tech-product organizations liable for your complete Product Growth course of which additionally consists of steady Product Growth, together with future iterations on the product foundation success metrics. Mission Managers are usually in service-based organizations, liable for one-time supply of the undertaking and is probably not concerned in defining buyer necessities or future iterations. Program Managers could nonetheless deal with the top to finish supply of applications which can not contain as a lot engineering effort.

Try: The Distinction: Mission Supervisor vs Product Supervisor

How do you suppose is a journey from a Machine studying engineer to the Product Supervisor with out attending a B-school?

I might agree that it’s doable to transition into Product Administration from a software program growth or Machine Studying growth position. It’s not essential to study this solely at a enterprise faculty. I can say this as I studied HR in my enterprise faculty :).

I might say studying by doing can assist, together with teaching from a mentor on Product Administration strategies and instruments. The important thing issues to study are the steps earlier than and after software program growth which is to outline buyer necessities utilizing analysis and measure the affect for future course correction within the product. That is the place platforms like Product College can certainly assist.

Is it vital to do Masters for PM position?

The brief reply is No, it isn’t essential to do Masters for being a Product Supervisor. Nevertheless, we’d like to pay attention to Product Administration strategies and instruments like PR/FAQs and practise them like every other abilities to be good at it over a time frame.

Any last recommendation?

My last recommendation can be to consider Product Administration as every other talent you need to be good at. Mastery will include observe and by defining the shopper issues, options, and affect very clearly for stakeholders, again and again.