Sujai Shriram - Product Manager Tips

Sujai Shriram, a CrossView Inc. employee, has product management experience that makes him appealing as a professional asset and that might eventually aid his entrepreneurial pursuits. Product management is rarely something that comes naturally, even to pros like Sujai Shriram. It takes of years of rigorous experimentation, hands-on learning and an unquenchable thirst to learn and improvise.

Below you will find brief explanations of key tips than can help you grasp the role of product manager…

• Know the Product – Knowing the product that you are managing improves your credibility and your value to the organization or client. When someone has a question about the product, you want to be the one that they instinctively come to. This means taking time to know the features and business rules of each product thoroughly, no matter how much research it requires. Additionally, product managers should maintain a document outlining the product that can be used to explain each feature. 
• Know the Market – Your competitors and the existing market can serve as your most valuable sources of information, if you take the time to learn about them. Keep up with the latest news from your competition in your market, know what is and isn’t working for them, and apply what you learn to your own product.
• Develop Relationships – Product managers often work with functional teams to achieve goals, and if you have good relationships with all involved parties, you can better navigate needs. Network, be helpful and develop positive relationships whenever possible.

The advice above hardly exemplifies the amount of research and learning done by seasoned businesspeople like Sujai Shriram. It is, however, a good place to start. 

Sujai Shriram - Basic Project Management Phases

Sujai Shriram is a Project Manager and a digital marketer working with CrossView Inc. He is experienced in management and leadership positions, but careful professionals like Sujai Shriram often review the basics of their roles on a regular basis. This allows them to stay focused and avoid obvious mistakes.

If you’ve been tasked with project management, consider the basic phases of your upcoming duties. This will give you direction whether you’re a seasoned pro or an office newbie.

1. Definition. To create a solution, it is important to understand and define the problem clearly. That’s 80% of the work. A project manager will often bring the team together to create a goal, define clear milestones, map out a schedule and reconcile/identify key resources need to guide the project successfully to completion.

2. Design. Once the problem is well defined, the solution design begins. It starts with laying out the high level building blocks, how they interact and potential risks. As the project team dives deeper in to each of the areas, carefully negotiation of conflicting design aspects and risk-mitigation helps the team evolve the solution to an optimal level that achieves the goals of the project.

3. Execution. Execution is everything. It makes or breaks the success of any project team. A project manager’s role is to ensure the team is clear on the goal and has no roadblocks to progress. During this phase, all team members are typically filled in on any remaining project information so that everyone is on the same page. If a project trends to go off-track, and almost always will as long humans are involved in execution, the work of the project manager and her leadership task begins.

4. Launch. Once the solution is developed and well tested, it can be rolled out in several ways. It can be a big-bang launch to the entire audience, or launched as a pilot to a subset of the customer base to test out and gather their feedback. With the pressures of today’s market demands of speed-to-market and high quality outputs, organizations are increasingly adopting pilot launches to minimize their risks.

You can likely find a professional with experience similar to Sujai Shriram’s who will be willing to have a mentorship conversation over coffee, if asked. Mentor relationships can develop into valuable career connections, if handled correctly.
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