Looking Back at My 2020!

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things.”

― Robert Brault

I have been inspired by Robert Brault’s quote and perished in 2020.  Each of you will agree that this year 2020 has been not like other years, it taught all of us new norms and things. In this blog, I am going to share how this year was to me and what I have penned down from my learnings in product management, testing and books in 2020. 

Product Management

As I have mentioned earlier,  dividing the list of blogs into two major categories:

• Insights from Books
• Learnings from the Experience

Insights from Books

I have read a total of 14 books this year and compiled learnings from my 4 favourite books this year. 

1. Indistractable – Nir Eyal (Re Read)
2. The Lean product playbook – Dan Oslen
3. The influential Product Manager – Ken Sandy
4. Product Led Growth – Wes Bush

Are you struggling to balance your personal and professional life and trying to improve your quality of life? The first thing you have to identify the distractions and then find ways to remove that. Being indistractable help you to change your perspective. My Key Learnings from Indistractable

Are you a Product Manager who wanted to sell the product itself, then this is for you. , My Key Takeaways from Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

In general as a PM you won’t have authority, so you have to lead the team by influencing the team, The Influential Product Manager – Ken Sandy

Are you keen about to run your product with the lean. I am fond of this concept, then this is for you, Top 3 Key learnings from The Lean Product Playbook

Insights from the Experience

As a Product Manager, I am able to relate and emphasize the importance of continuous learning and it helps in product management. Being curious and striving to do daily learning leads to a product’s success. 

The Product Manager’s every day is filled with small wins as well as challenges and new learnings.  It makes me rejuvenate and improve as a PM. I have shared my experiences in these articles, it will help as a new PM or an aspiring PM.

• • Significance of Learning by Doing in Product Management
  • How Do Mind Maps Help in Product Management?
  • What is MVP? Top 3 Benefits of Building MVP
  • Why does a Product Manager need to be a Great Storyteller?
  • Top 4 Challenges of Product Manager
  • 5 Handy Tips to Handle the Needs of Product Stakeholders
  • 10 Tips for Delighting Your Product Customers
  • 10 Handy Tips to Get your First 10 Customers for your New SaaS Product

Articles in Software Testing

I am a tester by heart and shared a few articles in the testing communities. If you are also like me, so feel free to go through it.

Contributed to the testing community with the below blogs.

• “AIOps” stands for “artificial intelligence in IT operations,” or using machine learning and data science to solve IT problems. AI can help with many IT functions, including detecting and remediating outages, monitoring availability and performance, and IT service management. To read more, A Testers role in AIOPS in Stickyminds community.

I have jotted down a few articles for the QA Touch community. 

• Here’s to another Avenged year of Happy Testers
• Jira and Test Management Guide
• Understanding Scrum and Agile in testing to achieve faster delivery
• How to Sync Selenium Automation Testing Results with QA Touch?
• ERP Testing Insights
• 5 Tips for Testers in Remote Work
• 5 software testing steps for a modern QA Team
• How Should We Conduct Mobile Friendly Tests
• Why Do You Have to Switch From Excel Sheets to Test Management Tool?
• Test Cases Tutorial for Beginners

The Books Read in 2020

I read the below list of books read in 2020. This consists of the combination of general books and product management books.

• Indistractable by  Nir Eyal (I read last year. Re Read this year too)
• The Lean product playbook by Dan Oslen
• The influential Product Manager by Ken Sandy
• Product Led Growth by Wes Bush
• Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson
• The Lean startup by Eric Ries
• Irresistible by Adam Alter
• No Rules Rules by Erin Mayer
• Purple Cow by Seth Godin
• Drive Through is not always faster by Mike Lyles
• Brand Identity breakthrough by Gregory Diehl
• Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan holiday
• Thanks for the Feedback by Doughlas stone
• The Myths & Millennials by Padmini Janaki

Courses / Certifications

• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) from Scrum Alliance
• Product Design for Product Management by Chris Parsell.

I’ve got a scholarship from the Product School for the course Product Design for Product Management by Chris Parsell. As a person from the technical background, it was an awesome learning experience of 8 weeks and hands on with the tools and the product design.

• Cultivating a Growth Mindset from Linkedin Learning
• Discovering Your Strengths from Linkedin
• Unlock Your Team’s Creativity from Linkedin.
• Attended Product Led Growth Bootcamp at PLG Academy.

Apart from all these learnings, mother nature taught us the important lesson with Covid-19 and that is living in the present moment and celebrating small wins. 

Feel free to share your learnings and achievements this year in the comments.

Wishing you and your family a Happy New Year in Advance!!