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Hi All, My sister has done Computer Science engineering Bachelor degree and has 5 years of work experience in India. She is applying for MBA at https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/programs/mba/full-time-mba/ and https://kelley.iu.edu/programs/full-time-mba/academics/majors-minors/marketing.html. Her overall goal is to get into Software Product management. Any suggestions if any of these MBA’s can open path in the desired space or if she is better of doing an MS in Comp engg. to further develop deeper Technology skills. Thanks
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Never. When do product managers have nothing to do? There is always market and sales facing work to do. There is always feedback to collect from all company teams and customers. If anything, then book customer meetings to listen to customers to fill those empty days or hours. I have been a PM for 40 years, and I have never had a quiet hour in my career. You need to get working because companies are shedding product managers or product owners who are not being 'productive.' If you worked for me and you told me you had nothing to do, then I would seriously question my hiring decision because I expect product managers to be busier than our CEO.
Associate: The way you ensure you have zero free hours per week is to prioritize customer meetings above all other responsibilities. The work does not start or stop with the customer meeting; you must spend time deciding which customers to meet, what questions you want to ask, what feedback they have provided in the past, and what you should anticipate. On the other end, you need to digest, document, and summarize all the feedback and comments from the customer users. You should also prioritize customers will benefit directly from the product delivery schedule, so you can give them a preview for early feedback or you should be taking key customers along for a ride during the development cycle to show them progress in iterations. You get the picture. If your scrum team tells you they need all of your undivided attention during the week, then your company has a huge problem with their product development process that makes engineering entirely dependent on you. When I had product teams, I used the 80/20 rule: the product managers did not spend more than 20% of the week with engineering teams; 80% was spent on market-facing activities including meeting with at least one client per week (52 clients in one year on average).
Do gamba walk when you are not busy .
Like what / how could you possibly use up all 8 hours of a work day
How?!
Only on fridays and around holidays. Usually i do 5-6hours of meetings then product work
Documentation, strategy, prioritization, preparation for important meetings(stakeholder). Besides feature, story work, i also have reporting, where i do data analysis and have to fix few template issues before i send it to the management and others, some reports in my company for my platform were built using diff/old schemas, so until i get resources to rework the reports, i have to do manual work…
During down time I try talking with customers/users. Not as formal as user interview though, for the user empathy aspect of the job.
You’re mindset and curiosity is the exact reason why there is a push for return to office
LOL. I worked more when I was full-time remote. Forced back to the office, forced to twiddle my thumbs when things are slow instead of doing something productive at home. Coworkers talking all the time to me about random stuff. Definitely worked more during COVID.