My learnings from curating conference on software product management...

Last weekend, we concluded the 4th edition of SPM Summit India 2022 jointly organised by ISPMA (International Software Product Management Association) and Center for Software and Information Technology Management (CSITM), IIM Bangalore. Prof S Sadagopan, Chairman ISPMA India, and Ex-Director IIIT Bangalore and Prof Haragopal Mangipudi, Global Board Member ISPMA, and Faculty of Product Management, IIM Bangalore were the Conference Chairs, and the program committee consisted of myself as the Program Chair, Pavan Kumar PVN, Senior Director and Chief Expert, Industrial IoT Product Management, SAP Labs and Andrey Saltan, Fellow Member ISPMA and Researcher and Lecturer, LUT University and HSE University, for the industry track, and Dr. Laxmi Gunupudi, Adjunct Faculty, IIM Bangalore as the program chair and Dr. Shankhadeep Banerjee, Faculty, IIM Bangalore for the research track. Special thanks to our community manager Radhika Subramanian and Venkatesh Balakrishnan, Head ERP and CSITM at the IIM Bangalore, Anuj Magazine and IIMB research students who volunteered on the even dayt for making it much easier than it was in reality!

This year's theme was "Building safe, secure and smart digital products & platforms" - a very apt theme for how the tech industry is maturing towards digital products and platforms, and there is a growing need to create them in a safe and secure manner. Over close to 4-5 months, we worked together on curating the agenda with subject matter experts representing the top companies. Here's a collage of our speakers from the industry track (thanks Pavan for the nice collage!)

In this blog post, I want to share some my key learning and takeaways from listening to these eminent speakers:

The day one of the summit started with Prof Haragopal sharing the context about the summit and walking down the memory lane with the previous editions of the summit. In his opening note, he referred to those as the "release notes" and talked of the life ahead like the "future roadmap" for a product. His analogy of life being just like products was an interesting one, and he stressed on the need for continuous improvement and excellence, and that we are never done!

Prof Sadagopan delivered the welcome address and spoke about India has made big strides in information technologies. He recalled how the Late Prime Minster Atal Bihari Bajpayee spoke in 1999 that IT is not just Information Technology, but in fact "India's Tomorrow". And when we look as what we have achieved - India ia #1 in digital transactions, and companies like TCS have market-cap of $200 Billion, or Upgrad is talking of a billion learners, and platforms like MOSIP are creating newer platforms.

Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Chairman of ISPMA delivered the welcome note.

Prof Rishikesha Krishnan, Director of IIMB delivered the opening keynote, and spoke of how the product thinking has evolved over time, and in fact permeated to beyond software. He spoke of how, for example, a retailer like Walmart is in fact much more than just retail, having huge IT and software products running it. Among other things he reminded that safety, security are becoming very important. Lastly, he also expressed satisfaction that SPM summit has brought academic and industry together, which is a very positive step forward.

Dr. Dayasindhu and Krishnan of Itihaasa spoke of their unique flagship project which is around chronicling the six decades of the evolution of the history of Indian IT from 1950s onwards. Itihaasa Research and Digital is a not-for-profit, Section 8 company that studies the evolution of technology and business domains in India. Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys, is its founder and Chairman. Do take time to check out the videos. I got chance to take a short-format impromptu interview of Daya and Krishnan. I asked them what stood out for them as they spoke with the luminaries. They were unanimous - the belief and the grit, the perseverance!

Dharani Karthikeyan, VP and Head of Analytics at SAP Labs delivered a talk on how the usage data could be used to avoid the guesswork, and sharpen the axe. With the ever changing technological space, it is very important for every product to maintain its product leadership by leveraging usage data and the insights from customer feedback. There is wealth of usage data available for any product but organisations are not making use of data in order to derive appropriate insights.?I liked the idea of "software wastage", i.e. the amount of software that is installed but never used. Apparently, it is some $259 per laptop! Clearly, there is a lot of opportunity to improve there.

Muthu Ranganathan, Product Leader at Oracle delivered an engaging talk on the aha moment of product-market fit, and shared key takeaways and case studies. Product market fit is the most important milestone in the journey of product, and whether you are a product manager or an entrepreneur, understanding the product-market fit milestone will help you decide the success or learnings you need to cover while really hitting that aha moment of product-market fit. I liked his metaphor of movie-making for a product, and the product itself might be either a pain killer (i.e., it solves a real pain) or a vitamin (i.e. a nice to have but not necessarily need to have) or even a vaccine (i.e. which eradicates the underlying issue rather than treating the symptoms). I think it is a great way to look at how your product is really positioned in a customer's mind.

Jyoti Goenka, Senior Director, Cloud Infrastructure Services at Capgemini spoke of how "Sensing as a service" business models based on IoT-based cloud services could pave the way for next generation of IoT not just as a technology but as a business model. She described the four-stage IoT solutions architecture, which, for example could be used for various applications like waste management, etc. She spoke of barriers, and I specially liked the discussion around economic and social barriers.

Next up was the first panel discussion - on the topic of platforms and ecosystems. The panel was moderated by Aarti Mohan of Sattva Consulting, and joined by Prof Rajagopalan, President MOSIP, Ritesh Shukla, CEO International Markets, Business Development, Solutions Sales at NPCI brought diverse perspectives. Prof Rajagopalan disucssed how platforms really differ from products in the sense that products kind of restrict the access but platforms encourage participation. However, people don't simply consume platforms but they consume solutions. Hence an appropriate regulatory structure is required to use it. Ritesh shared how UPI platform has ushered in an ear of financial inclusion. He spoke of the massive scale, simple interface, world's best platform, very robust governance, almost 15 languages, etc. are key successes of UPI. The journey of creating UPI to where it is today required them to work with the regulator, banks, fintechs, big techs, etc. and build an ecosystem across India, which involves both urban and rural. In 2021, it was accepted by 137 Million merchants and performed almost 38 Billion financial transactions were processed carrying over $940 Billion , which is almost 33% of India's GDP. Launched in 2016, and having achieved just $8 Billion in first full year 2017, this is a huge progress that has happened in a very collaborative manner. In his view, one of the keys to success was that UPI team was always listening to the customers. Anirban spoke of how platforms in B2B / enterprise space is all about integrating processes and intelligence. He reflected on the need to move away from the technical obsession to the solutions mindset. Some of the other points discussed were around empowering the ecosystem - clearly this needs a lot of hard work, empathy and dedication to the community, enablement session, monetization opportunities for customers and partners. Open source is another way which brings a discipline to learn from others, and requires openness. A key aspect of building successful ecosystems was building trust. There is also need to imbibe the "platform mindset" which is quite different from the product mindset. From simply building a product, it entails building a solution involving a core set of enablers.

The panel discussion on Availability, Reliability and Scalability looked a building platforms that could address the needs of markets - whether citizen-scale or global-scales. It was moderated by Abhijit Bendigiri, Group Product Manager at TangoRx, and the panelists included Dr. Jan Bosch, Professor of Software Engineering at Chalmers University, Sweden, Uttam Ramamurthy, Director and Principle at Cerner, and Pramod Walvekar, Principle Group SWE Manager at Microsoft. Jan spoke of how every industry goes through a lot of stages, and the products eventually become commodities. Sometimes products are overengineered beyond its original purpose, as he found from his 18-year old Television set that would not stop working, and he would not replace it! Uttam gave the context from healthcare that it is always personal, and the contact that I can get sick anytime, and hence I need healthcare 24/7. The panel agreed that both availability and reliability are key. They also noted that it is not enough to simply say that we are on cloud and that is cloud malfunctions, it is the cloud services provider's responsibility. Rather, it is important to think of your application performance during the system design. It is acceptable to have a planned downtime to do upgrades in healthcare...the issue is unplanned downtime. The panel wondered whether 100% availability or reliability is even possible, and that perhaps scalability is overrated? In the early stages of a startup or a new product, it is not important, and when growing, the key is to not overinvest in it - focus on what brings business. Invest just enough during the scaling but majorly focus on functionality. I felt some people might not agree with this last viewpoint, but then, what's a good panel discussion without some sharp disagreements?

The panel on Eco-system for excelling Geospatial Products and Platforms in India – Challenges and Perspectives was very unique. Moderated by Dr. Mukund Rao, Expert in Space and Technology, and joined by eminent and accomplished panelists Rakesh Verma, Co-founder, Chairman and Managing Director of MapmyIndia, Dr. Narayana Panigrahi, Scientist, CAIR at DRDO, Jayachandran Mani, Project Director at K-GIS and Prateep Basu, Co-founder and CEO at Satsure, it was indeed a very experienced panel in the GIS space. It was interesting that out of all the startups in India, only ~250 are in GIS space, and only one unicorn - MapmyIndia, even though it is by way of market cap following the recent IPO. Rakesh shared the journey of how they started back in 1996 - before anyone thought that location data would be of any value.

The last stop on day one was presentation on best practices for the ISPMA Excellence Awards. Seven finalists shared their best practices, and it was very impressive to see how they have adopted and implemented newer ideas on product management.

Day 2 started with the keynote from Debjani Ghosh, President NASSCOM. She spoke eloquently on the role of technology and emphasised on the need to focus on human values and human life. Technology needs to be safe, responsible, truly inclusive and perhaps the greatest equaliser for mankind. We should not just see this as India's decade but focus on the impact of tech on human life, the planet and the sustainable world. She cited how the so-called "legacy industry" of India - the IT services is transforming and is now expecting a double-digit growth . The government has also upped the game and there is a much bigger focus on building digital economy. She reiterated on the need to get design principles right fro tech, and focus on innovation. The point that resonated most with me as around upskilling. In her view, this needs to the job number one for the nation and for everyone. We shouldn't just focus on tech alone but on problem-solving mindset. We must be able to collaborate with global teams and remote teams. We must bring about a fundamental shift. Transformation is the only way we can stay relevant in future.

Next was the unique opportunity for me to conduct a fireside chat with Dilip Asbe, Managing Director and CEO of NPCI. Dilip is such a wonderful person, and I truly enjoyed chatting with him on how he and his team built UPI platform, and what lies ahead. You need to absolutely watch the video of that talk!

Hara presented the ISPMA framework for startups. This was covered in detail in the day 0 workshop, but this was an additional opportunity for the summit attendees to get a gist of how product management is not only required for startups, but even more importantly, how can they benefit from the ISPMA body of knowledge in this regard.

Ramani Siva Prakash's session on product-led growth was an interesting one. He emphasised that customer's expectations are changing faster than ever before, and we need to think of it while designing products. One example he talked about the the food booking while booking a flight. Food is an emotion, so we shouldn't treat it as a transaction. I think this is a great reminder of how everything shouldn't can can't be simply reduced to a very "functional" requirement alone. Madhubala Mukthinutalapati was the co-presenter but could not join as she was unwell, and Ramani was also not fully well. We thank them for their willingness to still deliver per their commitment (even though we were ready with a backup plan literally at 10-minute notice, should the situation so arise!).

Jay Dembani's session on platform mindset helped present some additional perspectives on the summit theme. He talked about how the value exchange on a platform is typically around social or economic currency. Franco Gatti's session on building product management competence was an interesting case study. He rightly emphasized that development is a journey, and you need to create your own personalized development plan.

The panel discussion on closely associate even if loosely joined topics pertaining to safety, security, privacy, governance, risk and compliance was a very lively one with some very interesting takeaways. Moderated by V Srinivas Rao, Chairman of Open Digital Innovation at IET Future Tech Panel, the panelists included Shobha Jagathpal, Managing Director and India CISO of Morgan Stanley, Abhilash Verma, VP of Product Management for App Delivery & Security at Citrix, and Puneet Tutliani, Co-founder and CEO of Appsentinels. Given the virtual explosion of platforms in recent times, it is a very significant area that needs a lot of upstream thought and careful planning and lots of continuous oversight downstream. These intelligent software platforms require less human intervention and provide recommendations, they are location aware, and especially in the fourth industrial revolution, the customers want more immersive behaviors. However, these pose a challenge for the platform security and associated issues. Security has to be made a continuous or a lifelong process, especially in the 4IR age products. We also see that the NFRs are becoming more important than ever before, even though we have been building products taking the NFRs into account for last several decades. Issues like security needs to be integrated into the app stack, and needs to be part of programming.

The panel discussion on AI, ML, DS in the context of building safe, secure and smart digital products and platforms was the last one. Given the rapid growth of AI technologies in last decade, and the almost infinite possibilities of where all and how all it could bring benefits to enterprises and businesses, there is naturally a lot of interest. However, there are also lots of questions in the minds of business leaders - quite often around how does it meet my business needs and how does it fit in my company? The panel was led by Rahul Rawat, VP of Engineering at Walmart and consisted of Peter Stadlinger, Head of Products for Freshworks Suite, Nishant Chandra, Sr Director of Data Products at VISA, Mitali Sodhi, Head of Data and Analytics at Upgrad and Shailendra Sharma, SVP Engineering at Dailyhunt. Peter set the ball rolling with the need to focus on "ample and relevant data" as as not all the data is always available. Nish highlighted that they were at the other end of the spectrum with huge amount of data from billions of transactions everyday. Of course, these pose privacy issues, and also engineering challenges. Shailendra spoke of how AI is being used in content curation in their company, and how they are now able to detect trends at global level but also at city level and location levels. Mitali rightly reflected that the AI journey might look the same but the destination are quite different. The panel reflected on bias, that it's not about eliminating the bias but reducing or minimizing it. We also can't eliminate the bias after the data has already been collected. In some sense, taking a leaf from the book of Test-Driven Development, they reflected that AI teams needs to think of something like a "bias-reduction driven data collection" process. It is also not always very obvious to people that the definition of bias and diversity varies across industries.

Hans-Bernd announced the winners of Excellence Awards, and it was great to see the bar going up each year!

The summit ended with a Closing Speech by Hon'ble Minister Dr C. N. Ashwathnarayan, Dept. of IT, Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka, followed by Dr. E. V. Ramana Reddy, IAS, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Information Technology (IT), Government of Karnataka.

Prof Sadagopan and Dr. Shankhadeep deliver the valedictory note and the vote of thanks.

Overall, it was a great teamwork of dozens of volunteers spread over 5-6 months that led to a successful edition of the SPM summit. I learnt so many things about being a volunteer (despite having been a volunteer for last two-plus decades with various organizations), being a conference chair (again, despite having played this role a few times) and as an attendee. I thank all sponsors, speakers and volunteers who gave away their time to stand up the summit, and the attendees who made it possible in the end!

See y'all next year!

PS: These points came out of my own notes, and might not capture all the things discussed by our eminent speakers and panelists. Also the mistakes, if any, are entirely mine!