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There is a local group for people who build software (and everyone who is interested in building software) called Nimma.Codes. They organise a meetup every month. This is usually in the break room of a software company, who also provide food (95% of the time it’s luke-warm pizza) and drinks, and there are two or more presentations followed by informal networking. One of the presentation tends to be given by the host company, and the other comes from ‘the community’. Often the talks are of a technical nature, but sometimes there are also talks of a more philosophical nature. I am a bit of an odd one out among the developers, so I was a bit unsure how I could contribute.

Then I had an idea of telling them about product management — most of the companies are not large enough to have a dedicated product management person. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing going on there: if you have a product, then you have product management processes that happen. I thought it would be fun to show how that works, and to give some advice on what a developer can do to steer towards better outcomes. I pitched this as “Product Management for Developers” and I was surprised at how many people thought this was an interesting topic.

Mid-December I received a message if I could present at the January meetup, so I got to work writing the talk, creating a slide design and creating slides. Above all, the talk had to be entertaining for a technical audience — nobody likes being bored during a meetup. But I also managed to show the importance of product management, and I have enough anecdotes to share.



It was a great success, and a lot of fun to do. I got some very positive feedback, and people told me they learned something new and useful. I might even give the talk another time, for another audience, as people seem to be interested. We’ll see.