Ankur Sharma

This post has been long due. Around a month back, I did a talk on "How to Play & Win the Product Management Career Game" which was my way of saying "How to crack that elusive Product Manager Interview". Now most of us end up reading, Cracking the PM Interview , because everyone else has read that and it is a lovely book. But the challenge with it in the Indian context is, that well, it doesn't really fit in. To crack Indian company interviews, every good PM ends up making his own "Cracking the PM Interview". The attached presentation is mine. I am kind of open sourcing it so that more people can benefit off it. Please do let me know your feedback and share it with others who you believe are preparing for PM interviews. Anyone who needs further help can reach out directly. Will be happy to help in person. How to play & win the product management career game from Ankur Sharma

Henry Ford, after "invented" the car and the process around it was asked if he asked around for what his customers want - in other words did a market research? He said, "If I would have asked them, they would have asked for faster horse, not car!" A lot of organizations with their razor sharp focus on their stakeholders requirements get into what I call a "faster horse" trap, where they just end up building a better version of what their stakeholders have used/already been using. What's more. at times, it backfires and "faster horse" ends up being "pooped horse". Then there is other side of the spectrum where data rules and whatever stakeholder wants in as a requirement, she has to substantiate with data. Sounds great and works great (most of the time). It becomes an Achilles heel when there is no data to substantiate a requirement, an ambitious requirement  which needs people to be intuitive and only people who have gone thro...

Steve Jobs did it by building Apple aficionados . Marc Andreessen did that with Netscape when he forced people to look web browsing as an entertaining experience and not just "a geek activity". Sean Parker ,  Shawn Fanning and John Fanning did it with Napster when they changed the way people look at the music. They all are/were great product guys who knew what the tribe wanted even before the tribe had laid eyes on their products. They didn't do the focus group studies or market research to know the viability of their idea. They didn't show the stakeholders, mocks of their products so that they can "fill in the blanks". But is that the only way to leave the product legacy? I don't think so. Google products , passes through at least 3000 eyes, before they get released even for the Beta. Agree, their hit rate is low but that is because they churn products dime a dozen, an evidence of their agile environment - one of the most important as...

Can you go through the phases where everyone in the organization resists the idea of your product being developed, from the phase where everyone wants to work on the project when it gathers momentum; not to forget the momentum-gathering phase? If you can keep yourself grounded in all these phases, then my friend, I believe you are a good product manage!