Hola everyone dajiahao 大家好。I’m Robyifan, I’m a Product Manager and a Software UI Developer living in Singapore. Originally from Latin America. I’m here to talk about: What type of personality is more suitable for Product management.

But first… let me show you my work:

I started as a remote UI Designer and Software Front End Developer, working with international startups and enterprises. Designing and building web apps, mobile prototypes, and Augmented Reality interfaces. This led me to scale into Product Management, leading teams of developers that are building new features into software products using Agile methodologies.

Probably you’ve already heard about product management if you’re into software. Maybe you are a designer or maybe you are a software developer and you’re wondering about what is product management.

Luckily there are all sorts of PM’s , even in software we got Technical Product Managers, Marketing PMs or PM Leads or just PM and even Product management associates

We could define being a certain type of personality to be best suitable for product management.

But I think it’s more about having certain skills that will allow you to do so perfectly. Most of them are just trying to dig up deeper into an issue until you solve it all the way through. So this skill is the one that you need to focus on.

So this may happen very often while you are working in Product management you need to gather requirements. You need to check for bug reports and it’s not only about collecting them and reading them and putting them into a Sprint or you know into Trello, Base camp, Asana or any of those.

Product management It’s actually about trying to understand them.

If someone or you, gather this requirement you need to really understand why is it that we need it. Is it a new feature that we need to add? but why is it that we need to add it? who is asking for it? and if it’s a bug, is it really a bug? So in Product management, most of the work that you need to do it’s about gathering requirements.
You may receive some ideas or some feature requests or bug reports from a lot of different people. Including lots of types of different stakeholders, maybe users, maybe the same internal team, maybe the CEO, or even yourself.
It’s not only about hearing these ideas it’s actually about understanding what are they for, right? It’s not only about “nice to haves”, it’s more about what should be built and what can we build in specific time frames with a particular team.

A good example in Product management is when you receive a bug report. You decide well I could just put it you know into the roadmap. I could add it into jira or Trello or Basecamp or Asana or any of those so, that the team can work on it. But it is best if you understand first what is the bug? what was the expected behavior originally? and what can you do to solve it? Even for features if someone requests a feature and it doesn’t make too much sense to you, probably you’re taking it the wrong way. You first need to understand what the person that was requesting it was requesting for. What was their purpose for requesting it, and then lay down or write it down in a way where anyone can understand.

Why it’s important?

that’s part of what makes a really good Product management leader stand out. So as a brief summary whatever the requirements that you gather. Whatever the ideas you get you need to be able to explain them very easily to anyone: Devs, the users, could be people on the executive team, or even other PMS. The idea is that when you receive a reported bug, report feature, request or any of those, you can explain it to others and explain why is it important.

There are some personality traits that come from creative people that are very important. Maybe a lot of product designers may decide to move into product management with which makes a lot of sense. But at the same time you need to be careful that usually as a creative person you may have a lot of ideas and product management its not only about ideas. It’s actually about execution. Even about ordering those ideas and organizing them in ways that you understand. The capacity that you have, to build those maybe as yourself.

You know what you can do as a creative person.

A good example is: let’s say that you like to design or you like to draw, and I ask you to make one drawing. I’ll tell you well, you can make this drawing but how long is it going to take? and if you say well it depends… it’s like okay, it depends on what? Just start telling me all the things that it depends on and then you try to set up a very specific time.

For me, this is what I can deliver to you in this time frame, if you want something else like these other requirements added, then I can deliver it in this range or in this time frame. That’s more than just creativity. It’s also about effort and availability, a good skill to have is to be able to organize your creativity. If you like drawing for example, don’t go and just draw, right? plan what you’re gonna draw first.

Product management it’s not all black and white.

There is some creativity for sure. A good aspect to taking into consideration is that you can find some ideas in places where you wouldn’t normally look for them. That will give you another perspective.

I was building a software web application to make interviews like job application type of interviews. I thought well these job application interviews usually go around PDFs or texts, right? People write down their experiences and they send usually just some type of questions that you need to answer. I said well, how do people communicate usually? what’s the best type of or easiest type of communication around? I thought of examples like a messaging application like WhatsApp.

I said well, how would it look like if you use something like WhatsApp to make a job interview, right? In those messaging applications, you can record, or you can even save or pick from the library of your own photos or audio to send to other people. You could even save or record the questions that you want to ask someone, and then send them over and perhaps even schedule the time when you are telling them when can they answer.

So you could even set a time frame for people that are applying to say: well, you have one week to answer these videos that I just sent you with other videos that you will send me. That’s a completely different approach, but it’s not a new one. I just took an example from another thing that people use a lot to do something that usually it’s quite a pain to do, and it takes a lot of time which is hosting jobs and applying to jobs and doing interviews.

MAKE THEORIES

Also good skill to have is to be able to kind of make theories on what’s going to happen next. Of course it’s really hard to estimate what’s going to happen in the future or the near future. But at least if you check if you’re always around checking news, you’re at least start seeing some paths. You start making some theories. You need to be able to say well if I’m gonna make this feature available on this platform, is it going to be around? is it going to be legal in the next couple of months according to the rules that are coming up in the country where you’re launching? or even perhaps you’re in a country where you’re receiving a lot of people from other countries and they may be a good amount of other cultures coming in.

Maybe you’re considering a feature, but perhaps another feature should be considered. Should be language support just because you checked the news and you checked what may happen in your future… So at least be broad, having this skill to gather a bunch of information all around you and start making theories and then decide which ones are easier to do. Maybe the value that they will bring will be higher if the amount of effort it’s good enough. You’re able to provide it with your team this way of calculating all the things around you and then making decisions good skill to have also.

Execution is very important.

What does that mean? I can tell you one good example. Let’s say you have a dream, you have a goal that you want to reach very soon, right? You may say well, I would like to go traveling. Go traveling well, it’s awesome, sure. But if you don’t set up a goal like: where do you want to travel? it’s nearby? how much does the trip cost? how much do the different trip costs? are you going with other people? how much will it cost depending on the part of the year? where you want to go? if you go in a certain time of the year… will it be enjoyable for you? or maybe you will reach a season that you just don’t like, right?

It’s not only about setting this broad general goal.

It’s about being very clear with your objectives. So if you say well, I would like for people to be able to log in, cool, that sounds very important, right? But login and then what? they’d be able to log in with other tools such as Facebook or Google? or maybe the Apple ID? so, only each one of those it’s its own feature, and it may take quite a bunch of time so just decide which one’s going and which ones don’t. It’s already an important decision.

Also, how are you gonna support the number of users you have? do you have the ability to support a certain amount of users or not? First, you need to check the platform, how many can we handle? every month? or every year? Depending on the infrastructure that you have.

Try to define.

Even with your personal goals. I try to define them very clearly because it’s easier if you to reach them. For example, for me, my goal originally was to come to Asia and live in Asia, where? on Singapore, right? to find the country first, okay. Is it just coming here? or is it staying here? It’s staying here , so I need a certain pass that will allow me to stay here in the long term. That’s why I didn’t go for a tourist, and then just see what happens right?

I went for immediately wordpass under under my own company and that will allow me to stay there for longer I was hanging around with my girlfriend well I needed to apply with her and I didn’t implied that we needed a dependent Visa we needed to be able to come here together these are the goals these are the objectives that you need to set up and say well I’m gonna take decisions but at the end I will need to make sure that those are going to be met.

The time frame very important.

When do you want to reach out that goal? for me coming to Singapore the goal was to make it in less than a year eventually it did happen it took around between six and eight months and it was great it took less than expected but that’s because the goal also very very clear, also to come here I needed to have a degree a University degree which I didn’t have before when I was planning this goal so I said well I need a degree that means that I need to start studying something that will allow me to get a degree in a very specific time frame.

I went ahead and looked for one I searched and I found one that allowed me to get an MBA for in less than a year so I used that one and allowed me to apply to come here as I mentioned it’s not only to say I want this is I want this with this features and this is what I expect this is the outcome that I expect of it by this time so very good skill to have as well.

KNOW YOUR CAPABILITIES

To add in on top of that last one it’s very important to also know your capacity or your capabilities so let’s say yeah you want to reach that goal but how much of it can you actually do right now? and how much of it you cannot? is it something that you can trade or is it something that you can earn? or is it something that you can learn? those things when you’re a product manager you need to know if you want to add a feature how many team members are we gonna need, do we have all the things that we need in order to start building it or do we actually need to do some research and that research needs to be scheduled as well?

Let’s say that you want to add feature a and you don’t know exactly how much is it gonna take, so you need to still add in some time and add in some effort from the team members to say they’re gonna research this feature to see if it’s gonna be implemented and that is something that you need to take in consideration.

That’s usually what we call a spike it’s more of a time that you dedicate to research but you set up that time you know you say two weeks I’m gonna dedicate to research this feature if it’s going to see if it can can be implemented if after those two weeks that process wasn’t successful we’re gonna say well maybe we’re just gonna look for another way of doing it or we’re going to look for another type of feature to add in because we cannot just keep on researching all the time unless you have a very large research and development department.

UNDERSTAND

Sometimes the team members need to work on other features so you cannot just let them be researching all the time this is a personality trait which is trying to understand what other people’s what other people is thinking whether in this case team members or other people in your company other users are thinking because there will be sometimes where you need to explain some things to them things that they haven’t even heard a bit right so you may have been researching gathering requirements building, things building prototypes for a long time and then next day you need to explain it to someone who hasn’t even heard anything about those things.

EXPLAIN

Sometimes uh it happens that you go in and you take it as if this person has been with you all this time so they’re gonna get you immediately but they don’t they’re not gonna understand you right so you need to be able to to you know to give an explanation try to make a presentation right, the presentation doesn’t mean that you need to go in and do a PowerPoint or do any type of design but at least right you understand what where they come from and then try to explain them.

Well, we want to build this feature what is it about? oh well it’s supposed to make this when you click on this cool is it why is it valuable why is it helpful for users well it will help them reach this goal in less time if we have it available right so at least if they don’t know about it they’ll understand it but you need to be very aware because part of being also a product manager it involves kind of like selling your theories right?

Product management – MAKE DECISIONS

You take a lot into consideration then you put your theories and say well I think this is a good approach or I think this prototype is a good option that we should add in but you need to sell it to other people it needs to make sense why is it valuable is it helpful, so creating a prototype is it’s good because other people can see exactly how is it solving the issue.

But in other cases you just need to explain it and it just needs to make sense you it’s hard to account that everyone will be on the same boat as you right you need to bring people into the boat and to that you need to be able to you know to give your hand and finally well it involves a lot of getting into, it is a lot of effort it’s not something that you can just pause.

Working in Product management…

There are there are no really pauses in this they you could consider it a nine to five job but there will be some times where something critical will happen in times where it’s not your regular schedule your work schedule and if you’re not there something very bad may happen.

Oh! the logging functionality is not working and it’s Saturday right well you implemented it with other team members what are you gonna do to solve it there needs to be a work balance and if everything goes well if everything goes as you planned it then you should be able to enjoy your free time.

What you can do is also as a product manager decide well maybe these features we shouldn’t release just right next to the weekend right maybe we can release it on a Monday that way if something goes bad we have five days to to make sure that we receive that feedback other team members count on you so so that they can have the most peaceful amount of time and be able to work in a nice environment.

You need to be able to do a little extra…

To provide that to the rest of your team you know you’re dealing with people here they need to be as friendly as possible they need to have all the materials they need to work right you’re also someone to support other team members.

So it’s not only about telling them what to do it’s also about giving them all the things that they need in order to make the most out of the work that they’re doing they can do a hundred percent if you want them to make 110 120 it’s very likely because you already gave them but they needed to in order to excel in that.

That’s the last thought I hope that whatever type of Personality you’re you can know that there will be someplace where very likely they’re looking for someone that is just with your people.
Check my Software Design & Development Company: https://pengyilabs.com/