Will the real Product Manager please stand up?

Background: Indian IT grew up primarily as a Services industry, where clients would provide the exact scope of what needed to be built and we would execute the same. This model even extended to "Product" companies when those set up shop in India. These would be pure play development centers with the Product Management function completely driven from the HQ. 

Over the years, a couple of things happened. companies gained confidence and gradually started moving bits and parts of Product Management to India. And on the other hand, the start up culture in India boomed. Both these pieces contributed to the Product Management pool that we have today. 

But since this is a relatively new function, there is whole lot of inconsistency in the way it is seen by different players today. Companies tend to bucket Product Management into one of the existing buckets that they have, adding to the confusion. 

You might ask, so "Who exactly is a Product Manager"? One consistent and simplistic definition you'd read is that the Product Manager is like the CEO of the product. Essentially someone who has a stake through the lifecycle of the product - from product inception(who the customer is/what customer problem will the product 

solve/etc), to product definition/development(how it would solve the customer problem/etc), and product adoption/maintenance(getting customer feedback and planning for future releases, via roadmaps).

One way to easily understand this role is by the what/how paridigm. Product Managers own what gets built(the content), but may or may not own how it gets built(project execution).

Here are the most common shades of Product Managers you'd find today:

Program Managers - This role traditionally is a pure play execution role. These are the rock stars who ensure the product gets delivered. What companies do is mix up the traditional part of the role with some ownership of the content and pitch it as a Product Management role. They also along side have Product Managers, who would be performing the e-e product management function.

Product Managers - This role on itself will have a various interpretations depending on the context within each company. A Product Manager somewhere could double up as the owner of the project execution as well, whereas at places he'd have a Project Manager to run the project alongside.

Product Owners - With Agile/Scrum gaining popularity over the years, the role of a Product Owner has become common in job postings, etc. The PO is the customer representative for the scrum team. While the PO could be the person with the maximum business context within the team, he/she would most likely be working together with a Product Manager who would be more outward facing.

Requirements Manager - These folks manage requirements. The very basic difference between a Requirements Manager and a Product Manager is that the PM would be generating requirements himself(based on various inputs), whereas the RM would be the one managing and planning those into projects.

The above are the most common variants i have come across. Would like to hear back on how you see this function and which shade applies to you, if you are a Product Manager yourself.

App review - CamScanner

Have you ever clicked pictures of documents to "scan" them in the absence of a real scanner? While it does the job functionally, the result is generally not very pleasing. And that is exactly where CamScanner comes to your rescue.

What it does really well:
- First things first, it's very easy to find the app on the app store. I went to Google Play looking for a "scanner" and there it was perched right on top of the search results. A combined effect of SEO and user installs/ratings gone right.

- I simply love the cropping feature that it comes with. The automatic part is very smart, and does it's job well most of the times. At times when you need to crop the document yourself, it's very easy to use and hardly takes time to get used to.

Tip: When scanning a paper, keep it on a contrasting background when clicking the picture. Auto crop finds the background fairly easily and does a perfect job.

- The small design decisions that are made make the app very intuitive to use. For e.g, when you click a picture, the click button turns into an undo/discard/back button. So if you want to take another better picture, you don't need to move your fingers around, just click on the same button again. Also avoids the case of people accidentally hitting the Ok button, as you need to consciously move your finger to click on Ok.

Small design decisions such as these transition the experience from being good to wow!

- The generated pdf is of very good quality and i have used it for banks, etc without any complaints whatsoever. Even the watermark in the free version is not jarring enough to complain. Also, in-app sharing is in place, so makes it extremely convenient to share the created pdf with your contacts anywhere.

Do note the rather harmless looking "Generated by CamScanner" text towards the bottom of the page.

Where it could improve:
- I believe the app could be simplified a bit overall. While i have been a regular user of the app for a few months now, there is still a good ~50% of the options left untouched. To me, that is scope for simplification.

Recommended?
Yes! Does the job of a phone based scanner perfectly well, and is available on multiple mobile platforms. Has a perfectly well deserved overall rating of 4.5 of Google Play currently.

Second time coming

As they say, life's all about second chances...and here i am for my second stint at blogging.
While the first stint lasted all of 3 posts, which for some strange reason i deleted on a whim a couple of years back, i am hoping this time it is for good.

So what makes me come back? A bunch of things actually. Foremost being, i have been having more and more urge to move from being a passive reader of blogs to also start writing myself. Also, with my daughter now a little over 2 years, i have this need to document all the awesome stuff she does at one place.

And what can one expect here? Anything and everything that catches my fancy. It could be about the lunch that i had this afternoon at Rajdhani and their awesome service, or that app on my mobile that i think completely nails the user experience. One thing that is surely going to occupy space here is my daughter and her escapades.

So here i am, and like i said earlier, really looking forward to this ride!