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A Product Manager (PM) is the strategic leader responsible for defining the "what" and "why" of a product. They act as the bridge between customers, business stakeholders, and engineering teams to ensure the product delivers value to users while achieving business goals.

A PM starts by identifying customer needs and pain points through research, interviews, and market analysis. They define the product vision and strategy, breaking it down into a clear roadmap with prioritized features. They work closely with engineering and design teams to translate these ideas into actionable requirements, ensuring the product is built effectively.

Throughout the product lifecycle, the PM monitors performance, gathers feedback, and uses data to make informed decisions about improvements. They also collaborate with marketing, sales, and customer support to drive adoption and ensure the product succeeds in the market.

In short, a PM owns the success of the product by aligning the team around a shared vision, ensuring delivery, and creating value for both customers and the business.

Earning the trust of a team is essential for effective collaboration and success. I approach this by:

1. Being Transparent: I prioritize open communication and honesty. For instance, during a project update meeting, I openly shared the challenges we were facing, which helped build trust among team members as they felt informed and included in the process.

2. Listening Actively: I make a conscious effort to listen to my team members’ ideas and concerns. When a colleague proposed a new strategy, I encouraged discussion and incorporated their feedback into our plans, demonstrating that I value their input.

3. Following Through on Commitments: I ensure that I meet deadlines and deliver on my promises. For example, when I noticed our team was at risk of missing a deadline on a key project, I took the initiative to reorganize our workflow, delegate tasks more effectively, and set up short check-in meetings. This allowed us to complete the project on time, reinforcing my reliability to the team.

4. Showing Empathy: I take the time to understand the individual needs and motivations of my team members. By being supportive during high-pressure times and recognizing their personal challenges, I create a safe space for open communication.

5. Encouraging Collaboration: I foster a team-oriented culture by celebrating collective achievements. After we completed a project successfully, I organized a small team celebration to recognize everyone’s contributions and strengthen our bond.

6. Being Approachable: I maintain an open-door policy, inviting team members to share their thoughts or concerns. This accessibility helps establish a friendly atmosphere where everyone feels comfortable engaging with me.

By implementing these strategies and sharing specific examples, I build a foundation of trust that strengthens team dynamics and enhances overall performance."

So I'd say the time I took the risk was, I actually went against the recommendation of my manager. Not directly, but essentially I was put on a project at Niagara and I was looking at a lot of the contract amendments and I analyzed our contract negotiation with Uber. And so as I was looking at the whole data, trying to see the discrepancies and really seeing, okay, what lanes should we negotiate, seeing what are the terms of negotiation that we should use, and then finally, I wanted to also forecast on terms of a long-term growth. So not just necessarily for just this term, but see how that would last for the future quarters as well. So kind of taking those into consideration while I put them all out into a matrix and showed the team, the director, and a lot of my team was thinking that we should go with the option that saves us the most amount of money. I'll put the $700,000 to $800,000 for the quarter, implementing this new amendment that I actually disagreed. And I suggested we just take somewhere closer to about the $600,000 range because for two reasons, one, I noticed that the lanes that we included in the $600,000 would lead to better client relations with Uber as a long-term and one of our biggest carriers. And two, I also noticed that in the long run, we actually would save a little more just because in the future quarters with seasonality to keep into account, those lanes were not always going to save us the most amount of money. So maybe while the $700,000 to $800,000 option would save us that much in the first quarter, when it comes down to the winter, it would save us only about $300,000 versus the $600,000 option is a little more consistent throughout the seasons. And so we actually noticed that in terms of a long-term growth for the year, we would save a lot more. So that was a time where I kind of took a risk to go against and maybe recommend something slightly different than my manager. But I think the director, when he heard me say these things, he took those into consideration and saw my analysis and saw that I was able to back up kind of my decisions and this type of risk to making sure I'm minimizing it as much as possible. So I think that was something that he really appreciated and that the VP of supply chain ended up deciding to work towards.

Have a curious mind and approach with understanding. Talk to the person 1x1, see what's up and go from there.

I led a project to implement a new feature in our loan processing system aimed at reducing API latency for faster loan approvals. Midway, I encountered data inconsistencies and latency issues caused by schema mismatches between the new API and our backend services. To resolve this, I optimized the data schema mapping, streamlined query performance, and introduced Redis caching for frequently accessed data, which significantly reduced the API call frequency and improved response times.

I also collaborated with QA to parallelize testing, allowing us to catch issues early. By continuously optimizing our microservices with adjustments to load balancing and asynchronous data processing, we increased processing speeds by 20%. While the deadline was slightly extended, our enhancements directly improved loan approval times and were a solid technical win for both the team and the user experience.

This is a product which we release recently it would check the recent breaches that happened exploiting certain vulnarability in the recent past and also check the vulnarabilties in the infrastructure and then provide a score based on severity. the higher the severity the higher the chance of getting breached. This was a great hit but two of our customers came back with a specialised request, the wanted to quantify the severity in terms of revenue loss so it would help them prioratize fixes on the infrastructure. This not only required heavy research but also defining the scope as well that where it fits in. The reason it was important to think about this feature because it was a big contract and our company wanted close it before the end of Q2. I had a planning sessions with the stake holders and product team, we defined the scope of the feature and then communicated with the customer and got all the buy ins, there had to be some repriorization required to imediatle start working on the project, I had a chat with my team and transperantly explained why this was such a high priority for the company and how it aligns with the company goals. This gave boosted their morale and also they saw the advantages of adding this feature and the moral was high.