Mastering Platform Product Management with Elena Leonova

Introduction to Product Management Journey

Rina Alexin | 00:02.695–00:48.386

Hi everyone. And welcome to Productside stories, the podcast where we reveal the real and raw lessons learned from product leaders and thinkers all over the world. I’m your host, Rina Alexin, CEO of Productside. And today I have the pleasure to be speaking with Elena Linova. Elena is a chief product officer at Spryker, a digital commerce platform where she leads global product innovation and strategy.

Elena has over 15 years of experience in product management. She’s a mentor, a keynote speaker, an advisor for early stage startups, and also recognized as a trailblazing woman in product management by us at Productside. Welcome, Elena.

Elena | 00:48.386–00:54.451

Welcome. Thank you so much for having me here and welcome to all of our listeners.

Rina Alexin | 00:54.451–01:11.596

Great. First, I actually wanted to say congratulations on your promotion. You just got promoted to Chief Product Officer at Spryker, I think, last summer. But well done. It’s wonderful to see women advancing in the field, especially when it’s complex as platform products.

Elena | 01:11.596–01:21.635

Well, thank you so much. Also a great honor for me to have a chance and a trust from the global leadership and the team to be doing that. So thank you so much.

Rina Alexin | 01:21.635–01:32.14

Well, Elena, I love to hear first from all of our product leaders. What is their story? Why product management? How did you get into this field? Can you share your story with us?

Elena | 01:32.14–03:31.858

Yeah, absolutely. So my story is not necessarily very conventional. So I’m Ukrainian and I started my career back in Ukraine. And at that time, about 15 years ago when I was just starting, we mostly had outsourcing companies that were outsourcing product development to Ukraine. And there was no concept of product management because all the product management was done in the US or in Europe where the people who are closer to business were sitting.

So I started my career as a business analyst and during that time I just happened to read the book by Marty K. Guncolt inspired and that book at the beginning he talks about how he was a product manager at eBay and I remember like going to work in the metro reading that book and thinking like, my god, like that sounds amazing. Like first of all, I never heard of product management and also like the way he described eBay was so amazing. And I remember having that

thought that it would be so nice one day to become a product manager at eBay. And then fast forward a couple of months. So I started working as a business analyst for this not really well-known, at least in Ukraine, company, American company, and as a business analyst.

And then in just a few months, the company announced that it’s being acquired by eBay. And I’m like, my God, how in the world is it possible that all of a sudden this company in Ukraine that is American, I knew that, but is being acquired by eBay? And I was like, my God, like now I’m going to become that product manager how Marzia Kagan was at eBay.

And kind of I lived with that story and I was like so excited. And then they started having all of those acquisition talks and the leadership came in and they said that all of the engineers, quality assurance people, like all of the technical roles are going to be transferred to eBay, but not business analysts because at eBay, they don’t have a concept of a business analyst. So therefore, they’re going to be putting waste with us.

Elena | 03:31.858–04:39.751

And I just remember in a moment, I went from being the most excited in my life career-wise to like, my God, what is happening? First of all, I’m going to be losing a job, but then it’s my opportunity to be a product manager at eBay. And I went home and was thinking about what do I do? So do I just take it or do something about it?

And because I remember that I read this book, so I put together presentation for eBay leadership who was in charge of acquisition. And I came to them and said, look, I read this book. Martin Kay can explain how to be a product manager. I can do it. Give us three months. It’s going to be me and other five product manager business analysts that we have. Give us a chance. Like I read the book.

He was a product manager at eBay. I read the book, I understand what needs to be done, give us a chance. And to my surprise, they gave us that chance. And that’s how I started my journey as a product manager. And three months later, me and other fellow business analysts became product managers at eBay. And from there, everything started.

Rina Alexin | 04:39.751–04:58.658

You know, when you were telling me this story, it felt first that it’s, do you believe in like manifestation where you put an idea out in the universe and it kind of comes back? But in your story, you still had to fight for it. It’s like you had this goal, it was happening, but it was, you still had to make it happen. I think it’s definitely a sign of someone, I guess, strong in their, in what they want. So.

Elena | 04:58.658–05:07.859

Yeah. Yeah.

Rina Alexin | 05:07.859–05:34.638

In addition to being a product manager now, you’re working on commerce platforms, which are very complicated. mean, commerce by itself is a complicated industry, lots of regulation, lots of changes in the industry you have to pay attention to. But you’re also working on a platform product. And for our listeners, can you kind of go over why a platform product is complex in its own right?

The Complexity of Platform Products

Elena | 05:34.638–07:25.011

Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about types of products, most of us think about products as something that is being developed by a company and then is being offered to consumers. And that is relatively easy because you understand that as a product manager, you need to go talk to your customers, your users, and understand their needs and build that in the product. Then the next level is your B2B product where you build the product, but your…

customers are companies and their relationship internally are much more complicated depending on the size of the company. There might be lots of things that are happening and you need to tailor it to their needs and those companies don’t look the same. That is the next level of complexity. But when you go to a platform product, now you’re actually entering a completely different space. Most of the platforms are actually built for B2B companies as well. But you have your platform.

on top of which somebody else are building additional capabilities, then kind of then you take that and offer it to your

customer, whether it’s an end consumer or another, I don’t know, maybe a of a company that is going to be using it. And the easiest example to think of it is pretty much Apple. Apple’s success when it comes to products that they offer and when it comes to software is not just what they have built themselves. It’s that ecosystem of developers that they enable that build all of those wonderful capabilities and apps that we like to use that then all together from Apple and all of us.

ecosystem are being offered to consumers. And that’s actually what make us love that type of product. And that’s ultimately what the platform product is all about. You’re not thinking just about your end consumer, whether it’s a company or just a consumer. You are thinking about those people who are going to be creating the new value on the platform. And there’s lots of complexity that comes with that.

Rina Alexin | 07:25.011–07:52.29

So on one hand, it is extremely complex because you’re building for so many different personas. But then on the other hand, if you get it right, you actually have this ability to create way more value for the system itself, right? Because people then are then stuck or their stickiness with regards to the platform. It’s not easy to change once you build on it. OK, so then I have this question because sometimes we learn more from our mistakes than from the things that we get right.

Elena | 07:52.29–07:54.483

Mm-hmm.

Rina Alexin | 07:54.483–08:06.446

So do you have maybe a story to share early in your career perhaps where you’ve made some kind of mistake or a judgment call where you learned a lot more from that experience?

Elena | 08:06.446–10:05.006

Oh, yes. There was one that was really career defining. And it was also back then at the beginning when I worked for that American company that got owned by eBay. And at that time, I didn’t understand the difference between platform products and B2B products. And I read all the books that were possible because I had to teach myself how to be a product manager. So I read everything that was available to me.

And I everybody talks about you build the product, you ask your customers, and based on that, you make decisions. So everything was really clear. So I was working for this company that was building digital commerce platform. And I kind of think that the word platform should have meant something to me, but it didn’t at that time. So we were talking to our customers and a lot of our customers said that this technology that we use for the storefront or the actual shop,

that they have to extend and customize and make it look they own is outdated and nobody’s using it. So it needs to be updated. And we’re like, okay, so we got it. We heard that feedback consistently. So we understood that it had to be updated and changed.

I took that feedback to our engineering team. We discussed it and the engineering team looked at it and they were like, yes, absolutely, it’s outdated. Let’s pick a new technology and rebuild everything. We did research, we compared different options and we found a new technology and started building this new storefront experience that from a user experience looks the same, but technology underneath is different.

And then we had this customer partner conference in Las Vegas, which is huge, thousands of people. So me and my engineer partner go on stage and we talk about how we heard your feedback that our technology was not great. You needed to customize it. You needed to make changes to the storefront. So we listened to your feedback. We made changes and now you’re going to love it. And as we were presenting it, I can see how the…

Elena | 10:05.006–12:10.72

faces and the facial expressions that everybody in the room changed from being excited to hear about the topic to almost being angry. when I got to the Q &A, I was so terrified, what are we gonna hear? And I was right. So the moment when we opened up for questions, people were like, we understand that you heard the feedback, but why did you do it? Another person spoke up and he’s like, that is absolutely stupid. This is a terrible decision. And we tried to…

and overspons something explaining why we made that decision and what kind of technology we use and all the benefits and stuff, but it was not working. We wrapped that up and said, all right, so everybody who didn’t like it, we’re like, don’t understand yet what happened and why you don’t like it because you want something new, it’s new, full technology, we’ll have it. Let’s meet after the conference in this coffee shop and everybody who wants to come and let’s discuss it. What we learned in that conversation is that because of what product was a platform,

So most of the time when somebody wanted to launch this new digital commerce store as a customer, they would work with a partner and that partner would need to build this new store from the new website. And all those partners, they were companies and they had their engineers and those engineers were trained for certain technology and certain technologies stack. And we picked something that was so outside of anybody, like all of our partners, and they didn’t know how to use this technology.

Basically, for them to use this new technology, it would mean that they would need to take all their people, all of their engineers, retrain them. That would mean that they would lose a lot of time, that those people are going to be working on paid projects. If they do that, it means that there’s going to be lost opportunity to work on something, so they need to compensate for it. It will mean that they will now need to raise prices for their customers.

if they raise prices for their customers, the product, our collective product becomes less competitive and we start losing deals. And that was kind of that moment when I realized that in platform products, it’s not kind of the decision that you as a platform make for your end customer.

Elena | 12:10.72–12:53.213

is you also have those partners whose needs you need to understand in order for you and them work together in order to create that value. And when I realized that, we obviously took that decision back, we refactored everything, changed it to a technology that was more appropriate and everybody was happy after. But that’s kind of from that moment I said it, like I realized basically that there is this whole topic of platforms and developer platforms in general.

that require a different approach in product management and engineering approach and user experience. And it’s kind of needed to be treated in a different way. And that’s basically what got me started on this whole platform product management topic that I typically talk about.

Learning from Mistakes in Product Management

Rina Alexin | 12:53.213–13:20.246

So it’s like this decision that you made had these unintended ripple consequences. And when you’re building a platform, you still want to innovate, right? But there is probably what I’m hearing from you is there are disruptive ways to innovate. And then there are less disruptive ways that can actually are tenable for your partners. So you mentioned changes in your approach. What do you do now to make sure that this never, you never have egg on your face like this again at a conference?

Elena | 13:20.246–14:41.309

Yeah, absolutely. Since that experience, pretty much always worked in platform products companies. And what I saw over the years is that even a lot of product managers, they still don’t have that understanding, that terrible experience that I went through. So I started sharing a lot of my knowledge internally as well as externally to…

Make sure that people understand the platform products are different, that you have, like you need to understand who are all the players and how the value is being created. So then you can get all the right inputs when you make decisions. So for example, if you’re building a platform products and the success of the customer is relying on that developer in in between or a partner to do something.

then you need to understand what can you do to make the developer experience better. So then this developer can actually make the customer experience better. And then the same way around, you need to understand what customers need, what customers need, and then go from there and understand, okay, so if they want this, how can I make the developer experience much better? So then it’s going to be easier for everybody to get to the goal. And that’s pretty much kind of like the principles and the philosophy that I always share. Make sure that we internally follow

that and we evaluate every decision through those lenses.

Rina Alexin | 14:41.309–15:05.613

So let’s actually talk a little bit more about decision-making because what you’re talking about is, you know, I hear a lot from product managers about the challenges, especially with B2B products of, know, they’re dealing with also, as you mentioned at the start, multiple personas. are needs. Sometimes when we go into work with an organization, we find that they’re working on a B2B product and they don’t even have the B2B persona. So, you know, it’s like…

Elena | 15:05.613–15:07.185

Yeah.

Rina Alexin | 15:07.185–15:18.786

But on the platform side, you really can’t ignore certain personas. And what I heard you say is based on your decisions, you need to decide which side or which party are you going to enable and then which one you’re going to really solve for. So let’s talk about prioritization because when you have so many different personas and you have a lot of different needs, some of them could clash.

Elena | 15:18.786–15:22.126

Yeah.

Elena | 15:22.126–15:32.851

Mm-hmm.

Rina Alexin | 15:32.851–15:45.806

And there’s always way much more that you could do than you’re able to with your own resources. So how do you make the cut for what your team focuses on or doesn’t?

Elena | 15:45.806–17:41.574

Well, I prioritization is definitely hard, as you mentioned. don’t think that any of it, at least I don’t know any person who actually knows how to make prioritization decisions absolutely right because there is no right or wrong. But the way I approach it, I always start with principles.

before you start thinking about which framework to use, how to actually stack rank everything and say, well, this is the best decision, then the next one is that type of decision, regardless of what framework you use for it. I think it’s important to understand the fundamental principles for making that decision. For example, when we think about the platform products, you actually have those two dimensions. You have the capabilities that we can build ourselves and that are going to be applicable to

either some of our customers or the majority of our customers. Then you also have the level of complexity, something that is relatively easy to do on a platform versus something that is fundamentally really hard. When we look at that, I typically focus on

us as platform developers focusing on solving the hard problems for the majority of the customers. So we’re trying to figure out, let’s say, because we’re in digital commerce, so everybody will need to make sure that there is a new modern checkout that supports, let’s say, Apple Pay. So that is relatively hard. It’s something that impacts everybody, and it’s so deep down into the…

processes of commerce. So then we would rather do it. But if somebody needs to make a feature that is specific to a type of product that they’re selling, let’s say, maybe you offer highly configurable jewelry that can be made to order, and that only happens in certain use cases, and it’s relatively easy to do for that specific customer. So then that type of a decision would lead to the partner who’s going to be working with the customer.

Elena | 17:41.574–18:26.835

So then they actually figured out how to do it. And that’s of a guide for our decisions of what kind of problems we solve. So in the platform products, you should be solving problems that are applicable to the majority of the customers in the most hard problems. If it’s relatively easy to do, leave it to somebody else and they will be able to do it. And especially if it doesn’t affect or applicable to all the customers, then you also should not be doing. And that’s kind of like, it gives us that quarter, what we focus on, the majority of the customers, the most complex problems.

And then we kind of use any of the frameworks, whether it’s rice or something that kind of we can score decisions based on it and decide which ideas to focus on. But that’s kind of like overriding feedback or approach that I use for prioritization.

Rina Alexin | 18:26.835–18:41.518

Do you ever, and I don’t know if this is an appropriate question even, but do you ever stack rank your personas? Like you really, you must make your developers happy and the customer, it’s not as happy, it’s okay. Like, do you have that ranking?

Prioritization in Product Development

Elena | 18:41.518–19:50.747

I actually don’t, so I don’t do that. For example, for my type of products, because it’s a digital commerce platform, so we have the partners who are building specific digital commerce solutions, then you have the company that is selling, and then you have your buyers or shoppers. There’s three personas, and we basically always look at every single decision, like how it’s going to impact the developers who are going to be…

creating that tailored solution for that specific customer, how they’re buying, how basically the people who are selling, like the seller experience is going to look like, and how easy it is for them to add products or to manage the shipping workflow or fulfillment workflow and how it’s also going to result in actual changes or great user experience for the shopper buyer. So it’s kind of like always…

every decision is looked from all the three different angles. And it’s not easy because you kind of need to be considering completely different people with different needs and personas. And also you need to have different skills to assess what developers would be happy with and what they need versus the shopper who actually goes on the website and buys another piece of jewelry, for example.

Rina Alexin | 19:50.747–20:22.862

Yeah, I do see sometimes with organizations where they struggle with this question because they end up not even noticing that they’re prioritizing one persona over the others. And then over time, that really creates a substandard experience for everybody. And so it’s good that you actually keep in mind all three of your critical personas when making decisions. So I’m going to ask also, there’s also an internal.

Right, there’s a business product management product team needs to make money for the business So your decisions also have the implication about You know just your your own revenue potential so that’s also a tricky one because and when when things are complex it’s like how do you match one product decision to the ultimate revenue a company makes but

Elena | 20:22.862–20:40.435

Yeah.

Rina Alexin | 20:40.435–20:56.59

I find that without doing the thought behind it, it’s really hard for a product team to then prove to their company how valuable their decisions are. So do you have a way in which you actually link financial outcomes for the business to the work that your team does?

Elena | 20:56.59–23:08.288

Yeah, like you’re raising a really important point. I feel like for many years in product management, you didn’t have to actually link kind of the actual business outcomes in terms of the money to the product decisions, because it was mostly about the customer needs and kind of their goals and kind of what can you do better for them. But I like to remind my team all the time that product management is about building the products that customers love.

But at the same time, for the majority of us, we’re building products that need to be commercially viable. If you work for a product company, that product needs to be loved by customers, but also needs to make money. And when you add that angle to product management decisions, a lot of new conversations start happening. I also just probably within the last couple of years started

realizing how important that is and how many times before in my career I was not doing it. And that’s why prioritizing something that was exciting and seemed like a great idea, but at the end of day, it didn’t actually make any money for anybody. So now, the approach that I take.

is I definitely look out to the company goals. So whether, let’s say, if you need to make new revenue, then you need to understand kind of who’s going to be in pipeline, like who are those customers if you work in enterprise space, or if you work for the consumer products, who are those customers and how exactly they’re going to be buying your product or what exactly do you want to sell them? You also need to understand kind of

the churn rates, are there any upsell capabilities? Are there any cross-sell opportunities? And obviously, because I work in enterprise platform space, for me, it’s all way more complex than for somebody who works in B2C type of products. But linking all of those ideas and understanding which of those KPIs are you actually trying to impact and what actually gives you the highest probability. So I developed for myself this weighted scoring table where I put all the important KPIs.

Elena | 23:08.288–24:54.003

and I give it like a weighted score for each angle. So for example, if we need to make new revenue, that’s one, and that’s going to be scored from like zero to five, and maybe the weighted score of that is going to be 10%.

If we need to make our product more differentiated, that’s not like a tangible money outcome, but like you also kind of like if that’s what you’re going after, then you also can score that and say how important it is. And then kind of like based on that, you try to understand and there’s like other scores that you can develop for yourself depending on your needs.

But like it kind of helps you understand like are you prioritizing heavily for making new money or retaining customers or maybe kind of, I don’t know, having a better differentiation story with more marketing store, like marketing outreach. And kind of that helps you understand kind of where to go. And the last important part there is to also not forget about the operating costs, which I also found out recently that the majority of the product teams don’t think about, but

You kind of need to understand how much money it takes you to operate something, to run something for a customer and how much you can charge on top. So that is something that a lot of people don’t think about. And especially the last two years when things became more complicated and everybody had to cut costs, kind of understanding where can you…

optimize what you’re doing internally becomes even more important. So that’s not a specific maybe answer to what you asked, but I think there’s lots of questions that from my point of view, product managers should be thinking if they want to be in equal parties at the business making business decisions because product is all about supporting the business by providing the product that people are going to buy.

Linking Product Decisions to Business Outcomes

Rina Alexin | 24:54.003–25:01.574

couldn’t agree with you more. by the way, there is a common question I ask with product leaders is, well, what is the cost of a sprint at your company? And a lot of people don’t think about even just the two weeks that you spend focusing on something, and are you creating or destroying value for the business? So this exercise that you do with weighted scoring, does that change?

Elena | 25:01.574–25:07.363

huh.

Elena | 25:07.363–25:11.566

Yeah.

Elena | 25:11.566–25:16.935

That’s all.

Rina Alexin | 25:16.935–25:26.636

monthly, quarterly, annually, and do you do that with your team or do you assess it first and then kind of work with your team on the weights? Like how does that work?

Elena | 25:26.636–27:00.839

So I recently started doing it. I don’t think that I have a specific frequency. How often do I do it? But it’s mostly related to do we need to change the strategy of what we’re doing? So if we’re going in the same direction, then maybe we don’t need to touch it. But if there’s new product decisions that need to be prioritized, then obviously we’ll have to look at that. And I…

truly believe that it needs to be done collaboratively, plus I also love to empower my team to look at the same data. But we actually go even beyond that and we involve all the respective parties to…

that conversation with us. we will just… We actually use a really simple tool. Obviously, we use spreadsheets in Excel and we say, are the scores provided by the product management team. But now in marketing, what do you think the score should be? How differentiating that feature is from your point of view? If you are in sales, how differentiated that feature is from your point of view? And sometimes we will score something five and they will score something one.

And we’re like, that’s interesting. And then we had those conversations. So I found it really helpful when you kind of like, have an initial point of view as a product team, collaboratively, but then you open it up to others and you’re like, kind of some people like, yeah, like that’s not going to make the needle. Like it’s not going to help us close new deals because of that. But like we didn’t see it, for example, and we do it early on so then we can make our decisions earlier.

and find out about it before we launch something.

Rina Alexin | 27:00.839–27:24.374

That’s really cool. It’s like an invitation to a conversation. I love that you’re involving more than just like the typical product group. It’s also the stakeholders because you’re so right. You learn so much more and then you get so much more buy-in for the ultimate decision. And if you have to say no to something else that they’re working on, well, they already rated you highly on what you are doing. So then it’s easier to make that trade-off.

Elena | 27:24.374–27:26.203

Yeah, exactly.

Rina Alexin | 27:26.203–27:40.216

OK, so let’s actually start talking a bit about Teams, because we didn’t cover that yet. And so with Platform Products, have complicated users. You have sophisticated users, right? Because some of the partners and the people you work with or for are developers in their own right. So then how do you think about team structure for Platform Products?

Elena | 27:40.216–27:48.31

So.

Elena | 27:48.31–29:20.753

Yeah, I think team structure and like teams topologies is hard. In general, I don’t think that there’s right or wrong answer, but I think it’s even harder in platform products because you have those different personas. And sometimes those personas are so different because if you tailor your product decision or product capability to both developers and end users, you’re talking about completely different skill set that people need to have. Well, I…

try different models. And I truly believe that the best outcome is when you think through all the personas. So you don’t structure by personas, you don’t structure by product areas, but you kind of rather say, like, somebody has slightly product area, even though I said I don’t structure by product areas. But like, I know you give somebody an area of the ownership, but they think through all the personas at the same time. So they will think about…

I’m building this capability. This capability needs to be used by my business users, people who want to sell something online. There’s going to be also a shopper experience, wanting to think about that. And also this is going to be an area where we expect to have a lot of customization changes. So let’s think about what do we build ourselves? Where do we leave rooms for somebody to customize and build on top? And how do we make it flexible? And kind of…

I believe in that model, but it actually makes it really hard to find the right product managers who have the skills to think through all of those areas at the right level of detail.

Rina Alexin | 29:20.753–29:28.194

What makes it really hard? What is a skill set that you really think helps a product manager be successful?

Elena | 29:28.194–31:12.433

Yeah, well, I think it’s kind of like separately from any types of products. think product management, from my point of view, is more of a mindset than a skill. Even though you can obviously get better training some of the skills. But what I mean by the mindset, I think product management is ultimately all about understanding who has a need and…

kind of like who are the people who have the need, what kind of solution might help them. And thinking about how can you make that solution, but also like how can the company make money on it if you’re building commercial product. And I think it’s a mindset. It’s kind of like you have to be connecting the dots all the time at any single opportunity that you have. So yes, you can be better at like user interviews or maybe in Scrum Agile or how to create user stories or how to think through certain use cases. But I think it’s more of a mindset that you have

to adopt that you in every single conversation, you’re looking for understanding who those users are, like having that true empathy, trying to figure out what might help them, kind of having that problem solving mindset. And then thinking about kind of viability, like commercial viability of how can you actually bring outcomes to somebody to help them and then also make money while you do that. And…

So those are the skills, and sometimes they are not necessarily kind of super tangible, because that’s not something that is actually being taught in many product management books. But I found that that is critical for anybody to become a great product manager, assuming that all those people that are learning how to be a product manager, how to work with engineers, how to work with design and all of that.

Team Structure for Platform Products

Rina Alexin | 31:12.433–31:56.929

Yeah, I think what you’re describing in a way or the way that we talk about it at Productside, you’re basically describing the three points of product market fit, which is valuable, feasible and viable. And underlying those, underpinning those, I think you’re right. There’s a certain amount of skills in each area to help you uncover value. We’re talking about empathy interviews, market research.

feasibility has to do more with is it possible for the organization to actually do the or create a solution and then viable has to do with the business model. So I’m with you. It’s at the end. What I’m hearing from you is because platform products have the complexity of you need it to be product market fit, but you have basically three markets that there needs to be that fit for. It’s like you have to be a superstar to be able to do it. Right.

Elena | 31:56.929–32:03.534

Yeah. Yeah.

Elena | 32:03.534–32:06.355

Yes. Yeah.

Rina Alexin | 32:06.355–32:19.243

All right. And then on the developer side, is there anything that, you know, you could share in terms of your experience with building platform products that you would look for that makes for a good development team or development partner?

Elena | 32:19.243–34:32.915

Yeah. Well, I think in platform products, because you have an actual persona developer who’s going to be using your product, and it sometimes goes beyond just having APIs. I think we all already learned that APIs is a product as well, but in platform products, can be SDKs. It can be actually allowing somebody to go and customize deep down a certain part of the platform. It can be maybe spinning up another microservice or whatever. So the thing is that

developers who are working for platform products also need to understand that they are more or less like product managers. So they are also building like every developer decision that they are making is going to be impacting the developer experience of another developer that might be sitting in a completely different country, company, or another part of the world. And it changes because when you work for internal product that were like the code is hidden and nobody actually ever sees anything, it’s one story. If you’re working on a

product that is highly customizable and you build this developer enablement capabilities, you need to think through it. You need to think about the other developer who’s going to be on the receiving side and what kind of documentation they would want to have. What kind of enablement pieces can you provide? Can you write some sample examples of building that type of capability? So thinking of Apple as an example, Apple has an amazing developer program where you can start as an Apple developer.

And they will give you like documentation, examples, enablement materials. But all of that has been created by other developers. Like developers thought about that. And I think that’s really important for those developers who work for platform products. So realize that. And I think it’s actually one of the coolest jobs that people can have when they are developers, because they actually creating the value. Like the code is also a product and other people either absolutely love it or they don’t.

But I think it’s a great, it’s an amazing joy to work for a platform company where somebody is actually adopting keyword code as well and kind of looks at it. So that’s kind of how I look at it. And I think that the people who have that mindset, they actually enjoy working for platform products and would prefer those jobs over something else.

Rina Alexin | 34:32.915–34:45.676

It’s interesting. I feel that there’s a lot of product managers who have technical backgrounds. And as you’re talking, I’m wondering if there are, you know, if you’re a developer for a platform product, you might actually, and you want to go into product management, you might actually be like the right persona to then switch gears. And so along that lines, if you were to talk to a aspiring product manager who wants to get into platform products, what advice would you share with

Elena | 34:45.676–35:02.018

Yeah.

Totally.

Elena | 35:02.018–36:30.333

Well, yeah, that’s an excellent question as well. I think product management, whether it’s for platform products or in general is, as I said, it’s all about the mindset. So I think you should be looking for those opportunities where you think in that product market fit way, where you understand that there is a group of people.

that have certain traits, something common between them, and then they have this need, and this is how you can solve for that. I typically, like in my mentoring, I work with many people who want to become a product manager when they work in customer success or in marketing or even developers, and they think that they don’t have any relevant product management experience.

But when I started talking about it, I’m like, think of the needs, like think of the time when you actually spoke to a person and then another person and then another person and you saw that need kind of, and you understood what was shared between those people and you came up with something and then maybe you didn’t build it, but you actually went to the product team or development team and you pitch for that idea.

you basically became already a product manager. So that’s building your product management skills. And lots of us are doing this without even realizing that that’s what we are doing. And I would recommend every aspiring product manager to think about that and understand, are you actually already acting as a product manager to some extent and then build on top of it.

Rina Alexin | 36:30.333–36:39.946

I want to bring this to other stakeholders. if there are any, if anyone’s listening, who’s like in sales or marketing, see there’s way more in common with product than you think. Well, Elena, thank you so much. This is such a wonderful conversation about platform products. Again, I think you talked about it, but yeah, it’s like the top of the pyramid of complexity when it comes to products. How can our listeners learn from you, follow you? Where can they find you?

Advice for Aspiring Product Managers

Elena | 36:39.946–36:59.886

That’s true. That is true.

Elena | 36:59.886–37:24.817

Yeah, absolutely. I typically share a lot of things related to product management in platform products on LinkedIn. I also speak at different conferences. All of that is also shared on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is the best channel to get in contact with me. And I love meeting new people, learning about their stories and helping if I can. So please follow. I would love to have a conversation with you as well.

Rina Alexin | 37:24.817–37:34.574

Yeah, I’ll add to that that Elena absolutely produces some really great original content on LinkedIn. She’s actually a LinkedIn top voice. Congratulations on that as well. And thank you all for tuning into another episode of Productside Stories. If you found our conversation valuable today, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend and make sure to subscribe to Productside Stories on your favorite platform so you don’t miss an episode.

Elena | 37:34.574–37:52.018

Thank you.

Rina Alexin | 37:52.018–37:52.018

My name is Rina Alexin and until next time, keep innovating, keep leading and keep creating stories worth sharing.