Role of Product Management in India GICs

I got an opportunity to attend a session on the roles of the Product Management in India Global In-house Centers (GIC) on March 8, 2018 at Bangalore. The event was organized by Zinnov at the Citrix campus in Ulsoor Road.

Fun Fact – The moment I am hearing about Citrix, a few things will come to my mind. 3-4 of my friends are working there now and 3-4 were working earlier (both cases, across the globe including UK and USA). And in one of our recent deployments, we were using the Citrix clients to connect to our central servers from our remote locations. But more importantly, there is another case. When I was in Huawei, back in 2006 – one of my junior went for an interview at Citrix. Almost everyone from Huawei used to join Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, Citrix, NSN, Lucent etc. that time. So this gentleman went for the interview and got selected over there. In the HR round, he asked for a 100% hike. To his (in fact all of our as well) surprise, the HR came back saying, they won’t be able to give that amount. The reason is that, it may require the approval from 2 of their VPs and the HR need to specify why they are going beyond the normal band for this candidate. So they told they are giving 200% hike, so that it will be within their band. 

Note – Not sure, how much is true in the above case. At least this is what all of us at that time heard.

Background – Zinnov did some detailed study/analysis/data collection on the above mentioned topic and they had a lot of interviewing sessions with some of the major GICs in India. If I am not wrong, this is the link regarding the same. Zinnov hosted this event with the co-operation from Citrix and the event was attended by ~50 PMs in and around Bangalore.

There were 2 sessions – One was presented by one of the representative from Zinnov, majorly regarding the data analysis which they did. That was informative and below is some of the areas which they touched upon. Number of GICs which are having a PM role in India is very less and the number of PMs in the entire industry is even lower. There is a transition happening in the way, PM reporting structure in the company. Earlier it was under the VP, Technology and now it’s a separate division, parallel to the engineering. There is a transition from the old age PMs to the new age PMs. The transition includes SaaSification, Data Analytics etc. Also the major activities performed by the PMs in Indian GICs are managing the product roadmaps, Engineering Requirements, Marketing Plans, Presentations and Demos, Helping in reducing the turnaround time for the clarifications from engineering, supporting the sales/support teams, conceptualizing new ideas, working with the UX/Engineering/Business teams simultaneously etc.

The second session was given by Abhilash Verma, Senior Director Product Management at Citrix. This was one of the best presentations I attended in my whole life. I was just analyzing what was so good in his talk: - He was not talking the best vocabulary; he was not having the fanciest slides. But what he talked for that 1.5+ hours was connecting so well to his audience. Each and every one in that room (or at least a majority of us) was correlating themselves and 90% of the statements were our own incidents. He connected so well to the other PMs in the room. His content was brilliant and was having a smooth and wonderful flow and is having a pleasing personality.

Some of the pointers which I could recollect are given below – This includes the lessons from my current director as well.

• Almost all the GICs in India are doing more or less the same job as part of the Product Management role. This includes working closely with the huge engineering base in India, representing the customer, playing the liaison role between engineering, customer and business, maintaining the product road map, providing the user stories (agile) or the requirement documents, detailing the use cases and the user scenarios, identifying new business opportunities, making the life of the customer easy etc.
• India PMs have the advantage of working with the engineering group. Try to leverage that advantage.
• Try to learn each and every area associated to your product.
• Own everything associated to your product.
• It’s okay to have failures. Then only we will learn. Learn from your mistakes.
• PMs should be self-motivated and shall have the passion to make their products world class.
• If someone is forcing you to take a call at 11PM, then you are not fit for the job. It should come within (the sense of ownership).
• Try to engage as much as possible with your head office counterparts, as they are into a lot of customer meetings.
• Always be updated about your customers, market, competition, new entrants etc.
• Build the products for tomorrow, not today.
• We need product leaders and not managers.
• Credibility building across the teams may take some time.
• You should be able to join the dots and arrive at some conclusions fast.
• You should be able to take decisions about your product. It shouldn’t get pass you to the next person.
• You should not be waiting for the instructions. It’s our product, own it to the core.
• Always prepare well and write the required statements before the meetings with engineering.
• It’s common, even if you are not known about the launching of your product.
• Don’t try to sell your product. It’s the sales team’s job. You are trying to venture into someone else’s forte. Always be ready to help them in the sales meetings with the PM pitches.
• Don’t try to educate the Development or QA. It’s their area and they are the best for that job.
• Customer is the key in every business.
• Three teams which are very important for your project, other than the engineering are support, sales and documentation. These three teams are exposed with the customers and always work very closely with them.
• Always make sure that you have the backing up from Engineering, Sales, Support teams.
• Listen the Golden Circle speech by Simon Sinek - Link :- Always think of why, then how and finally what.
• From the product road map management, you need to slowly move towards product strategy.
• Don’t waste any opportunity in meeting and knowing customers well (including trade shows).
• Love the challenges coming your way. If there are no challenges, you are not doing something correct.
• Lastly, but more importantly – you may need to fake your confidence at some stages.

Conclusion - In short, it’s not the usage of any technology or methodology which determines your success as a PM. Everything is boiling down to your passion towards this job, your willingness to do/perform a task and your ownership associated with your product. This is true for each and everything we do. Also, it’s okay to take chances and having failures. Always learn from your failures and have the complete ownership of your product to make it a world class product.