How This Product Manager Transformed a Disengaged Team into a High-Impact Data Service Squad

OK. I, I think it was when I joined the, the company where I work for. I, I joined to be the product manager of one spot, uh, back that time. The squad had 4 developers and 1 engineer manager. And what, what did they do? What was the contest? The, the squad responsible to creating data services to the company which was basically business intelligence, data warehouse, uh, some, uh, data modeling, building dashboards to several stakeholders to, let's say, uh, to the whole company. And when I joined the, the company. Yeah, I noticed that. Uh, the team wasn't listening to the stakeholders. The all the road maps and, and the The tests that they were doing or driven by engineering mostly uh they also uh complained a lot about the users and, and it was more a project driven than a project driven, uh, thing

yeah, prior was project and, and after, uh, we turned a tool to product. And what I did was, uh, to listen, everyone in the team, uh, I, I, I. I did one on one sessions with every single of them. And also, I did 101 sessions with the stakeholders. Uh, it was like during my 1st 2 or 3 weeks, I talked to everyone, to senior engineer managers, to marketing managers, sstrategy managers, finance, advertising, and, and I, I could gather all their pin points to all the opportunities that we had, uh, back that time. And after 6 months, we, we noticed, uh, and I, I could, uh, approve that with, uh, my director that we needed, in fact, not only one team, but we, we were talking about 3 scopes. And, and then we created 3 squads. This data service squad was uh split in 3, and we hired more, more people to, to deliver the results uh to the, the stakeholders because they were complaining a lot and, and once I got there, it was like a, a, a pin or a box opening. Uh, so many opportunities appeared, and, and when I discussed with the director about the opportunities and the pain points, uh, it was really clear that we needed to, to prioritize and to grow the team to, to deliver better insights. Uh, in, in, and after the 6 months, we delivered, uh, 3 new dashboards, uh, that were. Uh, was, they turned it into the, the best user in the company. Uh, it was like the 3 dashboards were mostly used than the other 150 that we already had.

They were more used, uh, by far, by far, uh, because the, the, the dashboards that existed, uh, sometimes they're, they were outdated or even though the, the data was correct, uh, it was not, uh, user friendly. It was, uh, the dashboards are hard to navigate. So, the, the discovery process uh was made, uh, and I noticed that. Most parts of the teams, they needed the same information, but they had, each one had their, their own, their own uh dashboard. Uh, it was specific, didn't have any, uh, everything. So, uh, I tracked that by, by use, by, by page views. And also by, by feedback, but the feedback was mouth to mouth. I, I didn't have any formal process to, to gather that.

Mhm. Well, the, the challenges were uh were First, To understand the, the user pinpoints uh as a whole and, and to try to figure out what were the, the common uh pain points during their process, their, their decision making process. Uh, after that, I needed to, to gather the data to model data, some data we, we didn't have on our data la. uh, so the team needed to, to develop that. Uh, There was uh Some sort of uh engineering. Uh, how can I say that? The, the engineer team wasn't, uh, Believing that this was the the correct uh solution. Because uh they were accustomed, they were. Yeah, they, they were like always doing the same sort of job and this was a different thing. So at first they were uh reactive. OK.

Mhm. OK. Yeah, we, we had some, for instance, I elected only these 3, these 3 dashboards. Uh, we had like a more, more than 150. Uh, in fact, these 3 dashboards, uh, Were based on things that already existed. Uh, I just like created a new version of it and, and so what did I, how did I do to choose uh those options? I choose the options who were in the past mostly use it and, uh, who were, uh, who, and that would, would have more impact to the business uh because more people were asking about that, for instance, uh, traffic information. We didn't have a single dashboard or a place where you could find the delective users monthly active users, and this was a pain to almost everyone. Uh, so, uh, the options was almost obvious. Uh, people needed that. Uh, the, the prior dashboards, uh, that had the information complete were the most used it before, uh, and I, I put all the, the options, uh. Behind the other options.

My most significant learning during this, this process is that I need to, to listen to users and, and try to generate value to them. Uh, Also to, to have this, this open channel of communication because I did that, uh, I, I had just joined the company, so I talked to everyone in, in a pair of weeks. Uh, but having this, uh, communication process always running up, it, it, it's, uh, a huge learning process. It, it's hard, uh, nowadays. I, I, I am struggling to do that because the company just double the size. And And also how to, to set a vision that inspires the engineer team and how to bring them on board because uh sometimes they just wants to get their heads down and cold, uh, and don't understand that the products is bigger than that. Uh, you need to generate business value, you need to, to focus on customer. Customer bank points. Yup.