AA233 - Building Your Own Product: Ultimate PM Hack or Career Sabotage?

Arguing Agile

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12d ago 1:00:35

MP3•Episode home

Building products for yourself sounds like the perfect PM training ground!
At first glance, you get instant feedback, prioritize ruthlessly, and have no bureaucracy to whom you answer... but does it actually prepare you for professional product management, or does it create dangerous blind spots?
In this episode, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel explore several critical dimensions:

Learning velocity and skill development
User empathy paradoxes
Resource management realities
Technical vs. strategic balance
Failure tolerance
Career advancement
Business model understanding

Our findings? Set artificial constraints, validate with real users, document your learnings, and use self-building as a supplement to professional experience, not a replacement.
Whether you're considering a side project or wondering if your solo work translates professionally, this episode offers practical frameworks for balancing the best of both worlds.
#ProductManagement #MVP #Solopreneur #ProductStrategy #CareerDevelopment
LINKS
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@arguingagile
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596
Website: http://arguingagile.com
INTRO MUSIC
Toronto Is My Beat
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Chapters

1. Introduction: Building for Yourself (00:00:00)

2. Building for Yourself - Career Hack or Dangerous? (00:00:24)

3. Point 1 - Learning Velocity and Skill Development (00:01:14)

4. Confidence in Your Own Judgement (00:02:29)

5. Positives of Building Yourself (00:05:28)

6. Tip: Check Yo'self (00:06:52)

7. Point 2 - User & Market Understanding (00:07:37)

8. Market Segmentation (00:10:50)

9. Defending the Need for Speed (00:12:27)

10. Brian's Takeaway/Advice (00:14:36)

11. Point 3 - Resources & Prioritization (00:16:49)

12. Skipping the Pitching (00:18:49)

13. Point 3 - It's All MVP! (00:19:59)

14. MVP, but REAL (00:22:39)

15. Delighter Features & Frontend Frustrations (00:25:42)

16. Takeaway - Creating Artificial Resource Constraints (00:26:28)

17. Point 4 - Balancing Tactical vs. Strategic (00:28:37)

18. Pause to Check Dates (00:29:23)

19. Product Marketing Managers (00:30:37)

20. Strategic "Resources" Get Cut Anyway (00:32:44)

21. Technical Credibility & Empathy (00:33:33)

22. Tech Review Board (00:35:18)

23. Point 5 - Learning from Failure (00:39:20)

24. Safe Space for Learning (00:41:41)

25. Less Politics (00:42:52)

26. Point 5 Takeaway (00:43:48)

27. Point 6 - Career Advancement via Self-Building (00:44:39)

28. Hiring Managers HATE This One Trick! (00:47:02)

29. Takeaway - Hindsight (00:50:05)

30. Point 7 - Understanding Business Models (00:51:07)

31. In Defense of Strategy (00:52:02)

32. Are Both Sides Weak? (00:53:46)

33. Advancing Strategies, or Not (00:56:46)

34. Balancing Passion Projects and Professional Goals (00:58:33)

35. Final Takeaways (00:59:54)

36. Wrap-Up (01:00:31)

234 episodes

#Business #Brian Orlando #Tech #MBA #Podcasting Education

AA233 - Building Your Own Product: Ultimate PM Hack or Career Sabotage?

Arguing Agile

published 12d ago

MP3•Episode home

Learning velocity and skill development
User empathy paradoxes
Resource management realities
Technical vs. strategic balance
Failure tolerance
Career advancement
Business model understanding