How I Became a Product Manager?

29 June 2022

As a consultant, I enjoyed working on a variety of projects for different clients and industries. In these projects, I could constantly observe, apply, test and refine my own framework of thinking to address new business cases and challenges, from which I improved my skills, got promoted and thus gained quite a lot of sense of achievement.

Having said that, I hardly ever experienced an entire project from the very beginning to end in all these projects due to all kinds of reasons. Because of this, I could barely felt a sense of accomplishment from the success of the project. I frequently perceived myself as an observer and an outsider, while as an "external vendor", I truely was.

Inspiration

After several IT-related projects, I finally worked on a business strategy project again. I enjoyed tackling with data and generating ideas from the findings through financial analysis which I was quite "familiar" with. However, I couldn't help but wonder how the use of digital marketing, automation and other digital solutions may help the company's operations run more efficiently and generate more revenue.

I came to realize that while I do have decent business sense and enjoyed working with data, I am not a gifted strategiest. While I was not trained as a developer in my past education background, I've accumulated experience in IT projects and have been interested in learning coding.

I started wondering if there is a position in which I could grasp the business needs quickly through data, develop and implement the solutions by working with both developers and business owners?

The Opportunity

My husband, who was still my boy friend at the time, was working with a Singapore E-Commerce start-up company. His boss was looking for a project manager to help with their first mobile app development project. And my husband introduced me to them.

I joined the team and introduced the Agile Menifesto and MVP concept, working with one product manager and four developers led by the CTO together to launch the MVP version of the iOS mobile app.

It was the first time for the team and me myself to work on a mobile app development project, and it turned out to be a success despite the tight deadline and limited resource.

I found I could fully apply my expertise and experience in such projects, and I also realized I enjoyed learning and considering how to define the needs of users and prioritize the demands and solutions. was proud of my achievements in such projects and felt a great sense of ownership over this digital product.

After conducting further research and thorough consideration, I made a decision. That was to change my career from a consultant to product manager.

To be continued...