Micro-Interview: Milena Arsova, Director of Product Management | Baxter Planning

💬 "We can easily get carried away by novelty and the technological ‘cool' factor and miss the product-market fit validation."

INTRO NOTE:

Milena Arsova is a Director of Product Management at Baxter Planning, a SaaS company and market leader in the service supply chain planning space with over 30 years of industry expertise.  

In under 500 words, she shares: 

• How she got into product management…

• How she starts her mornings for maximum productivity…

• Some of her sources of learning…

And more…  

Enjoy!

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“How did you get into product management?”

Earlier in my career, I was exposed to multiple functions in the product/service ecosystem—product and service development, implementation, helpdesk management, technical sales support, technology evangelism, and product marketing. Product management was an organic transition that consolidated what I had learned from that prior experience into a role requiring a holistic approach and vision. It’s “a little bit” of everything and the best of all worlds. 

“How do you start your mornings at work?”

My day starts the evening before – I need to know what are the 2 or 3 things I must accomplish the next day that will help me progress my strategic objectives. In the morning, I check my mail to see if the plan needs adjustment (It rarely does! It’s important to isolate noise). Then I do cardio with an audiobook to kick things off with some learning, or I go for a horse ride to clear my mind. That’s followed by breakfast, black coffee, and the start of my morning meetings.

“What do you know about product management now that you wish you’d known when you first started?”

Just because it’s cool doesn’t mean it will sell.

We can easily get carried away by novelty and the technological ‘cool' factor and miss the product-market fit validation.

Do customers actually care about or need the feature? If yes, does it create enough value to justify the investment? What’s the ROI? This holds at a macro product level and at the feature level. 80% of features built are rarely or never used. I wish I started asking myself earlier whether I was focusing on the right 20%.

“What did your biggest product failure teach you?”

You need the whole organization to rally behind a product to make it successful. The coding can be done, but if the implementation team is not ready and willing to deploy, clients will have an underwhelming experience, no matter how great the software is. If the implementation is done, but the helpdesk team is not ready and willing to support it, again, the customer and the perception of the product pay the price. 

“What’s the #1 thing that has helped you shorten your product management learning curve?”

Courage or recklessness, depending on who you ask 😃. The most rewarding initiatives that have stretched me to my limit are the ones I had no idea how to do when I started. They force you to ask questions, gather and analyze data, lean on experts, and experiment.

Sometimes, not knowing the answer from the start leads to more creative solutions to problems. 

“How do you stay updated on the best practices in product management?”

For product management specifically, I am a big fan of Pragmatic Institute and its alumni forums, as well as Mind the Product. I also read relevant publications on trends in product management, product strategy, and tech on sites like Tech Crunch, Wired, and the Harvard Business Review. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is good for understanding macroeconomic trends impacting my target buyer priorities.