Panel Discussion: Rewards and Challenges of Being a Product Manager

A photograph of a 1-on-1 meeting

An enlightening panel discussion with some of our current SVPMA Board members, who are also experienced Product Management professionals, talking about the rewards and challenges of being a product manager. We will share major do’s and don’ts of product management, as well as “tales from the field”.

We will touch on some typical rewards of being a product manager, e.g., launching a product successfully, customer satisfaction, seeing your ideas come to fruition, knowing you created something good/great, getting recognized within your organization as a key player, collaborating with a variety of groups in the organization, etc.

We will also touch on some of the typical challenges facing product managers, e.g., preventing scope creep for a release, managing/reducing the number of “bright shiny” features that Engineering wants to add, interacting with demanding / unreasonable customers, managing eager Sales folks so that they do not promise features that we have not even scoped, managing disagreements between groups on feature priorities, etc.

Real life stories will be shared and there will be plenty of time for interactive discussion. Bring your questions!

About the Panelists

Tom Gilheany (Cybersecurity, Internet products) — Tom is a seasoned product portfolio and product team leader with over 50 product-launches across cybersecurity, emerging technologies, networking, and telecommunications. He is currently a consultant advisor to a cybersecurity accelerator, guiding teams through the process of creating successful products from emerging technologies. In addition to an MBA, he holds numerous technical certifications, including CISSP, CSM, CSPO.

Dan Galatin (Financial products) — Dan has over 15 years of experience managing primarily enterprise software, SaaS and data products.  He has a previous background in software engineering and is currently a Director of Data Products at Visa. Dan has launched brand new products as well as major enhancements to existing products with large customer bases.

Debashish Niyogi (Life Sciences / Healthcare products) — Debashish has over 20 years of product management and project management experience, most of it in enterprise software for the Life Sciences / Healthcare industry. His domain of expertise is SaaS enterprise content management and electronic data capture software for regulated business environments.  He is currently a Director of Product Management at Medidata Solutions, and holds a PhD in Computer Science.