In 2004, I was eager for a challenge. I embarked on an adventure of completing a Computer Science Bachelors degree. Fast forward to today and the adventure continues. I’ve been building products for 12 years for a variety of industries from finance to ecommerce, retail, real estate, hospitality and more. Although my roles were not focused on the technical implementation of the products (aka “platforms”), the Computer Science degree taught me a valuable ever-lasting lesson. This was to appreciate the technical complexities and unknowns that could arise during software development. From working in the industry, the biggest lesson for me…

Product management is an important organisational role which focuses on either building products or technology for customers. These customers could be people like you and me, other businesses or the organisation itself if the product is being used for internal purposes. It could be summarised as the intersection between UX, business and technology.

Most of us dream of working on a white-sand beach with the temptation of blue ocean waters just a few steps away. Our fantasy of a flexible working schedule, productively working in your pajamas from the couch and avoiding the long, stressful commute to and from work sounds amazing.

It really is until the honeymoon period of the remote work fades. Reality starts to kick in, and a whole new set of challenges begins to appear with remote working. From time-zone differences to feeling isolated and disconnected from the organization, remote work can be intimidating. …

More often than not, people act on the side of caution rather than taking a risk. It’s human nature to be risk-averse.

When developing software products, this sometimes creates more complexity than necessary. And other times, the necessary details are skipped which results in an under-engineered product. The balance is non-trivial.

Max Kanat-Alexander explains that overengineering is “when your design or code actually makes things more complex instead of simplifying things.”

“When your design or code actually makes things more complex instead of simplifying things, you’re over-engineering.” — Max Kanat-Alexander

Overengineering software products is the norm and often happens without…

Rowing requires coordination, clear communication, and collaboration to guide a team’s boat through the unpredictable waters to have a chance at winning a race. This happens to be the case in every sport where you participate as a team. In fact, this is no different for teams in the workplace. Like rowing, building digital products is also unpredictable. For example, when Open Table first launched, their first approach wasn’t guaranteed to work and it didn’t. It wasn’t until they tried the strategy of first getting restaurants on board in a condensed area then bringing on customers to use the system…

“Only 2% of the population produces food for the world to consume.”

The world of food has changed drastically over the past 23,000 years. Only about 200 years ago, “90% of the U.S. population lived on farms and produced their own food to eat”. Fast forward to today and we’re at a global population of over 7.3 billion that needs feeding. And “only 2% of the population produces food for the world to consume”. Farming has been innovating at different time periods, in different places around the globe. Recent farming innovations include vertical indoor farming and the utilisation of unexpected…

“AI is going to change the world more than anything in the history of mankind. More than electricity.” — AI oracle and venture capitalist Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, 2018

With the rapid improvements being made in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and the voluntary AI daily digest shared by my fiancé, I thought it was about time to take a deep dive in and see for myself what it was all about. In particular, I was interested in how I could cleverly integrate AI into product development conversations and how it could be applied to build products that people…

Have you ever been part of an amazing team? In this team, you could be yourself which means that you could speak openly and honestly, admit when you didn’t know the answer and feel comfortable asking for help. Members of this team made sure that you knew they had your back in every situation and encouraged you to be your best.

Have you ever been part of a team that was a nightmare to work with?This team constantly challenged your every actions and decisions, mistakes were never owned up to or recognised and getting support to try something new seemed…