Elena Myshenkova about the “Product Manager” course from ProductStar

Thinking about changing her professional life, Elena decided to take online training and chose the Product Manager course from ProductStar. He helped her not only to take a different look at her work, but also allowed her to adjust communication with the team and customers, as well as apply the knowledge gained in everyday life.

“A product is a universal profession, even your life is also a kind of product, in which there is a conditional backlog, development paths, evaluation criteria”

Elena Myshenkova

– What do you do?

– My position is called “marketing specialist” because we, in Belarus, lack many modern professions in the register of positions. Of my main functions, I can name: firstly, business analysis, especially that part of it, which concerns the “translation into the common human language” of the client’s desires and thoughts, so that a technical task can be drawn up on their basis; secondly, usability – we do not have a test laboratory, therefore the usability is expert, that is, analysis of either the current site or the requirements for a future site, analysis of similar services and references, market and search engine analysis, audience and feedback analysis, business processes and, finally, preparation of recommendations; there are also periodic responsibilities regarding content and strategy.

– And which of this, in your opinion, relates to product management?

– After completing the course, I can say that, in principle, almost all of the above directly intersects with the activities of the product. The fact is that the specificity of the Belarusian market is such that many customer companies do not have their own product managers. They may have, for example, a marketer, or a development director, or a sales director – and plus just the understanding that they need an online store. As a result, it turns out that I play the role of a product, just from the developer’s side. I myself find out the details of the project and in the end I become a kind of mediator between the customer and colleagues.

– You mentioned that you wanted to change your job, but after completing the course you decided not to. Why?

– To a large extent, the original reason for this desire was personal circumstances. I was depressed and it seemed that it was possible to take control of my life by changing my profession. I analyzed the training market for a very long time, made a whole table of online courses and eventually chose ProductStar – and, by the way, I didn’t regret a bit. After graduation, I reconsidered my attitude to my current place and now I use the knowledge gained on the course to work with clients. Some clients even say that they only want to work with me – and this, of course, is very pleasant.

This situation is a consequence of what I said earlier: clients do not have their own products. When you start asking product owners questions, it turns out that they haven’t thought about one thing, they don’t know about the other, they need consultations about the third, and so on. Many companies have recently come with a request: “What can be done? We have a rough understanding of what we want, and in what ways can we organize it? ” Therefore, now I feel my importance both for colleagues and for clients – and at the moment I have no particular desire to change something. However, given that I now have two product degrees and I apply the knowledge gained every day in my work, then perhaps after some time I will think about it.

– Did you have such that passing a lesson from the course made you look at your work from the other side?

– We studied a large number of different topics and I in one way or another have already touched on a lot of what I have covered in my work, so it is difficult for me to choose a specific lecture. But thanks to my studies, I began to look differently at the product, which in the end should turn out for me at work. What I liked, even when I was choosing courses at ProductStar, is that we covered almost all key areas. Not just “how to manage a team and set tasks”, but including deeplinks, prototyping, A / B tests and much more.

Even from the point of view of usability: I have been working with prototypes for a long time, I have a diploma in this area, but even here, thanks to the course, my focus has changed in terms of working on a specific product. I have been writing texts for a very long time, I have been working with the team for many years, but thanks to this course, everything in my head turned into a specific product system – and it does not matter whether it is a large project or small improvements, an online store or a corporate website.

– How long did you work in this area before taking the course?

– I have been making websites for about eighteen years. After some time, I began to do this professionally – either as a customer, or as a project manager, at the same time I took additional training: entrepreneurial courses, courses on usability, promotion, and so on.

– What book or several books would you recommend for people from the same field to read?

– There are very, very many books, one way or another related to this direction. In general, having studied at ProductStar and looking at how others learn (and I am a psychologist by education, and this is my small professional deformation – to observe the behavior of others), I can say that the choice of books depends on what kind of background a person has. I can recall a book offhand Rosenfeld and Morvind “Information Architecture on the Internet”… It helps to structure knowledge about the product, about the processes and put it all together into a single whole. Working with clients, with colleagues and observing how competitors work, I would say that systematization is one of the most problematic places. That is, the customers see the project rather spontaneously, and the performers in the end do not delve into the topic – and what turns out is what happens.

– The last question: what advice can you give to those who are just starting to take the course?

– I would advise you to listen to lectures very carefully and complete assignments, sometimes it is useful to “go beyond”, that is, do not only what is said in the assignment, but also add something from yourself, do the work a little wider and deeper, add comments. I can also add: of course, it’s not a fact that after completing the course, you will be working as a product manager. But it’s important to remember that product is a universal profession, because almost everything around you can be perceived as a product. Even your professional life is also a kind of product in which there is a conditional backlog and which has development paths and evaluation criteria.

For me, this became most obvious precisely because I did not go into products, and I apply the knowledge gained not only in the product. Today I manage to find their application in different projects and areas of life. I can draw an analogy with my education: I did not work a day as a psychologist after university, but this is the same universal knowledge, useful almost everywhere where people somehow participate. It’s the same with the product – products in our life are as ubiquitous as people.

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