Hi, my name is Joyce Temilolu Daramola; I prefer to be called Temi. Before we go further, let's dive a bit into my background. 

I studied Law and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2019, after which I was in active practice for about a year. Although I got fulfilment from my role as a Lawyer, I wanted to explore other things. My family influenced my journey into tech: my dad is a computer scientist and built the first computer school in Kogi state in the 1990s; my elder brother was a software engineer and is now a product manager in Germany; my younger brother is a software engineer, and my mom is the only odd one.

I began researching product management in 2020. I did a lot of internet scouting, read tons of articles, and watched as many youtube videos as I could find, but my first professional course in PM was with Utiva in 2020. With Utiva, I got a better understanding of Agile and how the Agile process works, I also did a lot of practical training while learning at Utiva.

My first role was in Demz Analytics, where I started in 2020 as an Associate PM for a device-tracking application. I currently work as a Technical Product Manager for a payment processing company known as Arca payments. 

Now let's get into my daily routine as a PM.
 

A deep dive into my daily activities as a PM

My day is filled with loads of meetings with cross-functional teams, most of which are to gather feedback and organize tasks. I usually start my day with a standup call to get feedback on what the software developers worked on the previous day and what they hope to achieve for the day. I then organize my priority list to fit in the business requirements; I also attend meetings with different teams to discuss requirements, blockers and any relevant topic. I run bi-weekly sprint planning, grooming sessions, and retrospective sessions with my team. I constantly engage in requirement-gathering calls from business developers to gather customer feedback that will be useful in improving our application.

Tools I use to execute tasks as a product manager
 

There are a couple of tools I use daily; these tools can differ for different organizations.

1. 1. Slack/Teams: Since I work in a hybrid workspace, I use either of these channels to collaborate and communicate with my teammates.

• 2. Jira/Trello: I use these tools to track progress and assign tasks to my team members.

• 3. Confluence/Google docs: Depending on the organization's preference, I use Google Docs or confluence to document my processes better. I also use this tool for PRDs and other relevant company documents.

4. Postman: I use this tool to test APIs.

• 5. Google Analytics: This is used to track user behaviour on our application.
   

Different departments I frequently liaise with as a product manager

As a PM, I liaise with different departments daily to help with the delivery of my tasks. These teams include:
 

1. 1. The engineering team: I have daily standups with my engineers to get updates on the progress of tasks they are working on. I also have sprint grooming calls to explain the objective of a sprint, after which we carry out sprint planning.
    

• 2. The business team: Most of my product requests come from my business team, as their job involves hitting targets and ensuring customers are satisfied. I interact with them weekly to get updates on aspects of the product to work on and aspects that require improvements based on customers' requests.

• 3. The customer success team: Once a customer makes a complaint, it is logged at the customer service desk. I interact with them to understand the problem and liaise with my team to come up with ways to fix the problem.
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• 4. The executive stakeholders: I liaise with executive stakeholders for the following reasons: to get product requests, give a status report on products I am working on, and defend anything that needs to be defended.
   

Things to note before resuming a new Product Manager role.

As a new Product Manager, there is a lot to unpack when resuming a new role. I advise you to take it one step at a time.

Before you resume your new role, take some time to learn about the industry you are going into; conduct adequate research, take courses specific to that industry, and understand your role and the company. You can also create a relationship with the company's employees by connecting with them on LinkedIn. 

When you resume, understand the organizational structure and processes, as processes differ for different organizations.

Lastly, understand the product thoroughly. The success of the product depends on your understanding of it.