My PRODUCT Journey

I started my career in IT as a Software Quality Analyst, and my curiosity has led me to bounce around different roles to gain a deeper understanding of what each job role entails. I've been a Product Owner, Web Developer, Scrum Master, Delivery Manager, and Solutions Architect. I also took on short contracts and gigs online as a Technical Business Analyst, Project Manager, Web Designer, Animation Artist, Customer Support, and Digital Marketer.

My career path may not have been a linear one, but my unwavering passion for learning and honing skills that can contribute value to an organisation has always guided me. I have gained hands-on experience in nearly every role involved in creating a digital product, enabling me to work effectively with teams and help accomplish business objectives. This drive to make a meaningful contribution has often led me to question myself, "What more can I do?"

Through my career journey since 2010, I've found that there's always a recurring gap to be filled in most of the organisations I've been with. This gap is the resource that manages and ensures continuous improvement and growth are upheld and sustained, not only for the internal teams and processes but also for the organisation's products and services. As a catalyst of change, I have brought upon transformation to organisations from having a project mindset, to a product mindset. Since then, my life at work has always been an amalgamation of an Agile Leader, a Spark Plug, and a Product Champion combined. I find this unique space gratifying as I increasingly lean towards Product Management.

Here are some of my key learnings from my previous experiences that helped shape me as a Product Manager:

• Working on the B2B Online Induction & Training Platform, I have experienced running workshops and market research with stakeholders and clients and learned how to enrich data with actionable qualitative insights. This allowed me to create roadmaps to a fully realised product that helped the team understand the customers' needs so that they could work towards building valuable features.

• Working on the B2B Dynamic Crowd Management application, I noticed the need for more innovation within the organisation. So I took it upon myself to action this. Using an old case study, I proposed using technology to solve a problem to the company's key stakeholders. From then on, I spearheaded the research and development of a prototype application that was successfully launched in 2017. I have always been an advocate of lean strategy. So, I combined my knowledge and experience in tech to perform rapid prototyping using low-code solutions to help test an idea faster and cost-effectively.

• Working in the B2B/B2C Performance Lead Generation Marketing industry, I have developed skills in launching brands, leveraging data science to measure performance, and constantly ideating and testing for conversion optimisation. To optimise the process of launching brands faster and more cost-effectively, I have created templates that standardise the industries and services we cater to. Furthermore, I played a crucial role in rebuilding the internal tool, which is the core application that supports the organisation's Service-as-a-Product model, and enables us to gather better business intelligence insights. This experience has also allowed me to take on the role of an internal product manager, which comes with its own set of unique challenges I learned to navigate.

• Lastly, while working with other organisations and their products, I gained an appreciation for the benefits of transitioning how an organisation thinks as a whole in order to achieve continuous sustainable growth. I utilised my Agile Leadership skills in change management to encourage this adoption across the organisation and mentor the next level of product managers, which helped initiate continuous improvement and innovation.

Each of these experiences contributed to a significant level of growth in different ways that I can attribute to the practice of Product Management concepts.

As my journey continues, there are only a few things I can really describe myself as... I'm an action oriented, lean thinking, truth seeking, value building, and growth-obsessed Agile Product Manager.