Nifty Innovation to being Plain Vanilla

I was engrossed in summarising the minutes of a just-concluded meeting. There was a knock on my door, It was my elder one. She had her #macbook in her hand & of course with a complaint that couldn’t wait. I inattentively nodded trying hard to multi-task. “Pappa, there is something wrong with Zoom chat”, she declared, seizing my attention. I paused and turned towards her, now …

Find the Watering Hole

Be it a new role, a new company or a new domain, Transitions can be hard. Transitions teleport you to unfamiliar territories. It is usually the consequence of the sage advice to get out of comfort zones. But transitions are inevitable for growth. One of the best advice that I have ever received on tackling transitions, something that I take very seriously and follow …

Steering Clear of the Digital Transformation Debacle

When a Digital Transformation Project ends up “successfully” but customer feels like he did not achieve what he actually needed, it is nothing less than a debacle, considering the time, money and the effort involved in the implementation of the same.

This is one of the top 5 reasons listed as barriers to success in Digital Transformation journey in recently commissioned Wipro Digital Transformation Survey 2019.

In this article, I explore what enterprises can do to avoid getting into this zone. Read on and share your views. Would love to have a conversation on this…

PM Vs Tech vs UX – Panel at PLF Bangalore

It was super exciting to be a speaker and moderate the panel at Product Leaders Forum, Bangalore last Friday. The panelists, Santosh Shukla, Nishant Choudhary, Himanshu Joshi, Sumit Sonal & Prasad Velagareddi brought in a lot experience, diversity and variety to the conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed the preparation & actual event equally. I did want to capture some of the aspects i enjoyed through this journey, so jotted a few lines capturing the same.

Thanks to Subhajit Paul, Madhurima Saha, Mohit Agarwal , all organisers & Volunteers who made this wonderful event possible .

How Exaggerated Constraints can help bring disruptive innovation?

In building products we often come across constraints. Whether it is technical constraint, a business constraint, a statutory constraint or financial constraint, it impedes our activity. It is often these constraints that leads to innovation. When the vision is sacrosanct, and achieving the goal is the only option, innovation appears, disguised as constraints. When the vision is sacrosanct, and achieving the goal is the …

The making of a sustainable business model

If you ever come to Bangalore, there’s very little chance that you will miss out on the “Darshini”s. Ao what’s a “Darshini”, you may ask –  “A Darshini is a simple restaurant offering: fast service, clean and high quality food at low prices, limited free space, and four/three tables with no seats and no waiters. In Darshinis, the operating principle is one of make-to-order, …

A Goliath called Excel

I chanced upon the marketplace button on Facebook app today. It was unveiled in India only this week. Like every product manager, instead of “experiencing” the benefits of the new feature, I was more curious about the proposition, the design, wondered how integrating marketplace to a social network would turn out etc. I started looking for the product announcement blog and found one on …

One exercise every agile team must do

Back in 2007, one Friday afternoon, my manager called me in to his office, just as I was about to call it a week. He had just returned from a certification course that he was participating for a week. He wanted my team to embrace Scrum and run the pilot in our team. Initially, I did put up a strong resistance to this. But …

Batting in the Foreign Pitch?

As product management is gaining ground in India, we are witnessing newer challenges than what we had a decade back. Glocal, Global Village, Multi-site sounds awesome isn’t it? Yes, but the product managers will know that it takes a lot more than just sounding awesome. Remotely managing products can in fact be a nightmare, far from being awesome. In this post, let’s look at …