There are hundreds of frameworks out there in the industry and no one size fits all. Depending on your industry, your business, your product, and your company culture, you can choose the right tool for the right job. It can be helpful to view frameworks not as a way to restrict your creative thinking but more as a structured approach to solving a problem. In this talk Dhananjay Joglekar, Experian’s Senior Product Management Director, provides a brief overview of the journey of a PM and some useful frameworks they should know along that journey.
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On eight crucial factors in the journey of a PM
As we all move ahead on our journeys, areas of focus and responsibilities change. Dhananjay noted eight “levels” he considers to be part of the PM journey.
“There’s skills, collaboration, communications, leadership, impact, influence, responsibilities, and outcomes. And at each level, these differ. So for example, let’s just say, we start at the associate pm level; typical skills that you might need are data analysis, user experience, ability to write user stories, thinking through how you build a feature and market the feature,” he said.
On using different frameworks for different projects in your PM career path
Frameworks do not stifle creativity, according to Dhananjay. In contrast, they help you see the issue more clearly so you can then solve for it. “These frameworks are like tools and guidelines for structured thinking. So it doesn’t mean that you can’t get creative when you’re a PM—these just help you frame the problem much better. It helps you solve things faster, it helps you deliver that value in a more standardized way.”
“And especially when you’re interviewing, the interviewer is always looking for your thinking. The answer, whether it is right or wrong, is never a question. It’s always about, ‘Are you asking the right questions? Are you framing the problem correctly? What hypothesis are you building? How are you solving the problem?’
“These are not prescriptive, by any means. Choose whatever works for your domain, your type of business, your company culture, because there are literally hundreds of frameworks out there. Think of it as Lego bricks: you’re assembling some of them, sometimes you merge two frameworks and come up with something better.”
On why customers buy what they buy
“Build it and they will come” is an approach that does not usually work, Dhananjay said. “Customers do not buy your product or service for what you’re selling. They do it to get a job done.”
On the journey of a PM, what’s the role of CPO?
Dhananjay said a CPO must balance more factors than an associate PM, including more factors outside the company. As an executive, “You think about your company, its growth, the social impact, the economic impacts, and the responsibilities of mergers and acquisitions and IPOs.”
In addition, while it’s a much more outwardly focused role, CPOs must maintain the product focus while also developing leaders within the organization.
About the speaker
About the host
Neha is the Senior Director of Product at Macmillan Learning leading a set of start-up products under the institutional group aimed to address challenges in higher education such as affordability of educational materials, retention and student success. She has been bu.ilding, growing and scaling products in the ed-tech space for the past decade with her experience ranging from course-ware solutions, student facing applications, to analytics and insights tools for decision makers. She loves to travel and lives in South San Francisco to stay close to the airport