One of my true passions in life is to help those who are in need. As I work with a non-profit startup which specializes in helping kids learn the important life skills in all areas, I managed to develop a stock market stimulation game for them (BBKNetwork)
As the product manager, there are a few important skills I utilized to take this product from strategic conception to deployment.
1. Solve complex problems
We knew from the start that we wanted to build a game to teach kids about stocks and financial investments since stock trading had become more prominent in the news with the Covid lockdowns. However, it was not easy to get the consensus on what exactly is the product that we want to build. After a lot of discussion and ideation, eventually I was able to build out a roadmap of the what features we would build in the mvp, and later versions of the product, as we narrowed our focus to building a simple and fun stock trading game for the 10-14 year olds. As a product manager, solving complex problems means to simplify problems and communicate the solutions effectively.
2. Communicate effectively
This is a really important aspect of product development. The CEO of the organization has a lot of ideas, but translating those ideas into a workable and good product was not always easy. As with a lot of business leaders, defining the scope of what is realistic given the resources available required me to communicate effectively in a clear manner about the upsides and downsides of each feature in the roadmap. The good news is that we shared the same vision in product strategy, positioning and marketing.
3. Build exceptional teams
Given the limited resources that a charity often needs to deal with, we had a truly amazing team that I was glad to be a part of. Our development team was made up of a few computer science students in their last year of studies, and our design team was just one person who wanted to transition to UI design for the first time. The key for me to build up those teams is through guidance on key issues but give them enough room to figure out and learn things on their own. For instance, as with a lot of newly formed and inexperienced development teams, I wanted to make sure I work with them on the first few sprints to understand their true velocity as students often overestimate the difficulties of development tasks.
4. Develop great products
Here is our MVP version of the stock market game, let’s have a look at what we were able to build in just a few weeks.