Lessons In Product Management

Managing Stakeholder Feedback with Preethi Sekar - Product Manager @ L&T Technology Services

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On today's episode, I sat down with Preethi Sekar, Product Manager at L&T Technology Servies. On this episode Preethi shares the dangers of taking product requirements from internal stakeholders and not including users in the research and feedback to determine what those product requirements should be. Preethi's story highlights how industry experience does not guarantee you understand your customer.

Here's what we talked about:

  • Preethi has a diverse 7 years of B2B and B2C product management, and today she's working in aerospace
  • Before aerospace, Preethi was working in the automotive industry, where she learned great lessons about managing stakeholder feedback
  • How Preethi was handcuffed by her executive stakeholders by not being allowed to work directly with the customer
  • When the product launched to market, it was a failure, and it turned out that the stakeholders didn't fully understand the problem they were trying to solve
  • Due to the failure, more than half the team was let go, but fortunately, Preethi survived and was tasked with fixing the problem
  • The team scrapped the initial product and started from scratch
  • One of the biggest stakeholder problems was how misaligned they all were
  • Preethi put her foot down saying that every meeting with her stakeholders had to include all four stakeholders to ensure alignment
  • Secondly, Preethi demanded to speak with users so they could understand, truly, where they failed the first time
  • Preethi mobilized a feedback engine through emails, phone calls, and surveys to get a better understanding of the problem and the context of the customer
  • The stakeholders didn't want to give up the power of determining requirements, but they eventually relented, knowing they didn't truly understand how to solve the problem
  • After talking to the users, Preethi really understood the problem and where they missed the first time
  • The re-release of the product was a success, and Preethi saw user engagement skyrocket after the new product launched
  • Preethi ended the conversation by saying how talking to users is a must and user feedback should trump stakeholder feedback, even though stakeholder feedback is still valuable

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