In this Accredian Spotlight interview, we feature Panidhar, a Devops professional with over 10+ years of experience. He is currently associated with Bank of America. His insatiable quest for knowledge and upskilling led him to enrol in the Global Certificate in Product Management at Accredian.
Question 1: Which program & batch are you part of at Accredian & tell us more about your current work profile?
Panidhar: I enrolled with the GCPM program, Aug 2021. I am a certified Devops professional with 10+ years of experience and currently working with the Bank of America as an individual contributor supporting the Application teams.
I help them to onboard their projects into the CICD platform to deploy binaries with a one-click automated process.
Question 2: Walk us through your career journey & what got you interested in Product Management?
Panidhar: Prior to my current profile, I worked with FIS Global as SSE II to automate infrastructure deployments using Ansible playbooks VRO/VRA tools.
Before Joining FIS, I worked with Robert Bosch business solutions Pvt. Ltd.(RBEI) as an SE, Administering life cycle management of tools like
- SVN
- JENKINS
- SONARQUBE
- ARTIFACTORY
As a fresher, I had joined Metaphor Software Technologies as a Build and Release Engineer handling release activities for java web based applications.
Question 3: What all Product Management concepts, frameworks & tools have you mastered in your program at Accredian so far?
Panidhar: So far the things I learnt about Product Management are
- How to define strategy and roadmap for a product
- Design Thinking and building an MVP
- Importance of UI/UX design frameworks
- Understanding Agile
- Waterfall models and importance of scrum/kanbann
- Once a product is launched, developing product research by user testing and following different approaches
- Starting product analytics, etc.
Question 4: What were some of the initial challenges when you got started on your Product Management journey and how did you overcome it?
Panidhar: There were a lot of challenges initially when I started the course and understanding concepts. I came from a technical background with no idea on marketing or any research on management tools.
By listening to class recordings I was trying to understand new concepts and product design and how to create a vision and a proper mission statement.
Question 5: Who is your favourite faculty at Accredian and what did you learn from them?
Panidhar: Sai Charan was one of my favorite faculty. He made us understand concepts more clearly and interestingly by providing real time scenarios.
Question 6: In your view, what is the goal of Product Management & how has it evolved in the last few years?
Panidhar: Customer satisfaction is crucial to the success of any product or service and it mostly depends on how well a PM understands that.
Setting customer satisfaction goals ensures that your product is on the right track. If you’re not reaching those goals, it’s clear that the product needs new features, changes.
Question 7: What are the current trends in Product Management that you are most excited about?
Panidhar: I am excited about the following trends:
- Constantly evolving technologies increased PMs to explore more tools for better user experience in usage and features of a product.
- Greater focus on data by analysing knowing what customers want from your product and how you can improve.
- Expanding AI and Automation for faster recycles of a product.
- Increase in Business value of soft skills.
Question 8: Which are some of the Product Management blogs, podcasts, communities & channels that you follow?
Panidhar: I have to start listening to such podcasts and blogs to gain knowledge on current affairs which has been added to my To-do List.
Question 9: Please tell how your journey has been with Accredian so far and what are the elements that you liked.
Panidhar: My journey with Accredian was a roller coaster ride. Initially I couldn’t understand the terms used in the course as I’m from a different background.
I slowly had to learn concepts and terminologies used in PM. I learnt about how to build a product from scratch, what kind of research is to be done by building MVP and UX/UX.
It took time but I finally understood all key elements and how it thrives a successful product.
Question 10: What is your advice to anyone wanting to start a career in Product Management?
Panidhar: In terms of advice, I’m not an experienced person to guide on this program but, I would suggest to refer and do little research in terms of growth, opportunities in this path and finally think about if this path is really matching their goals or not.
Hope you enjoyed reading this interview. If you want to read more such interesting student stories, check out Accredian Spotlight.
