Abstract:

Not everyone who has a technical background will end up writing code - and that's not a bad thing. On the flip side, people without a technical background can be incredibly hands-on in product development. Those people intersect in a role called "Product Management". Marty Cagan, one of the most notable people in Product Management, defines a Product Manager as someone who is able to "discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible."

This talk will dive into the following topics around Product Management:

- What is Product Management?
- What are some necessary skills for Product Managers?
- How do you become a Product Manager?
- What are some Product Manager-adjacent roles?
- How do you leverage these skills as a Software Engineer?

By the end, you'll have a deeper understanding of what Product Management is - whether or not you'd consider yourself technical.

About the Speaker:

Christiana is an Associate Product Manager & Communications Coordinator at Edensoft Labs, where she spends time learning about Product Management through mentoring, and she plays a flexible support role across her team, including product, operations, communications, and external customer support.

She graduated from WVUIT in 2023 with a major in Information Systems and minors in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, and English. While she applies both technical and non-technical knowledge to her current role, the English minor helped her thrive with her Communications responsibilities, allowing her to develop a deep empathy for both business needs and development capabilities.

Christiana's passion for Product Management started in her Junior year of college, where she pitched the idea of the "Library Reserve System" for the WVUIT library. Since she was fortunate enough to have a great group with a deep technical skillset, she was able to take on a more product-focused role, developing the product strategy, communicating with stakeholders, and focusing on the front-end design.