#1 Grad School Year 2 and Minimum Viable Product Manager (MVPM)
(photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash)
Hello friends and strangers, Welcome.
For this newsletter, I will steal Jason Fried’s approach: ship fast and iterate later. My goal is to share observations, thoughts and learnings every week, via this soon-to-be old-school communication channel. Hopefully one tiny thing from the letters would spark a quick thought and turn into something meaningful for you. At least that’s the hope.
I have another website to host longer articles, which frankly I rarely proof-read either. If life is a series of games and you can choose which ones to play, then this is my playground.
Welcome to the playground.
1. Course selections
As the summer ends, it is the time for course selection again. My experience from the first year truly humbled me and taught me to focus on only a couple courses that matter, if at all. It was not easy to pick one or two courses from a full list of interesting options; it’s also difficult to justify the time investment when I could potentially create more lucrative projects.
2. Minimum Viable Product Manager (MVPM)
I came across Brandon Chu’s article on Minimum Viable Product Manager (MVPM). The idea is that although you should have at least three main skillsets (UX, tech, business) to be a good PM, you don’t need to know all three areas inside-out. There are more necessary skills within each domain than the other. For example, understanding what API is can be important for a PM in tech but you don’t need to be a proficient programmer to do the job.
3. Multi-Dimensional Matrix
This reminds me of another mental model that I picked up years ago: the Multi-Dimensional Matrix. I envision my skillsets to grow into a matrix: trained in Psychology, professional experience in data analysis, experienced with storytelling and UXD which come more recently. The Matrix becomes a net that I can comfortably jump onto. For each explicit learning opportunity I try to map the skills I can develop or deepen onto the Matrix.
This MVPM model is an upgrade to the original matrix. MV implies priority, which lacks in the matrix where everything is flat. MV[fill in the blank] also expand “skillsets” into “any action that drives you closer to your goals”.
4. Strategy for now
Regardless of [fill in the blank], my main goal is to create products that can empower people while fulfilling my own curiosity. Grad school is a great place for fulfilling curiosities. The ability to create good products resonates with the skillsets of a MVPM, which includes UX, tech, and business.
After filtering out courses that happen during the day, I was able to find two that cover UX and tech. For business, if Rotman is not an option for now, I can always learn from people I work with.
5. Final thoughts
Aiming for Minimum Viable version of myself, or half-assing has nothing to do with laziness. To me, it is to acknowledge that I won’t be able to do everything that I want to, at least not to its perfection. Half-asking is about priorities and end results.
This is the very first letter sent from the Playground newsletter. Until next time.