The Agile Coach with Vivek and Pabitra chats with Andrej Dzidic, Director of Project Management - Technical at Mastercard. He defines what product management is and how his team sets up strategies with buy-in from engineering leadership. Andrej also shares how he builds teams by performing a gap analysis and prioritizing a potential product manager's communication skills. He talks about mentoring others using prioritization strategies and clarifies that a degree is not needed to enter a product; so be aware that competition is tough but not impossible to break through. HIGHLIGHT QUOTES Product management is about creating synchronicity - Andrej: "When I think about product management, you really don't have a successful product if you don't meet product market fit, right? So when you're thinking about it initially, you might think, okay, how quickly are we actually pushing things to the market and are we meeting that equilibrium point? But for me, what I really started to care about was predictability. So how in sync are our product managers with our business stakeholders?" Become great at the product by creating your own product - Andrej: "If you've never been a product owner or product manager, go out and build a product. Go and find someone on Fiverr who can do some light work for you that's relatively cheap. Make some wireframes, put together a backlog, and let's see you build a product. I mean, I do it in my free time, so even though I'm working in product, I'm trying to figure out how can I build something so that I can just go work because I love product management." Get to know Andrej and what he’s up to: About Andrej Connect with Vivek and Pabitra to find out more about what they're up to: About Vivek About Pabitra About The Agile Coach Agile Coach Website If you enjoy The Agile Coach and are interested in learning more, you can check us out at the link below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-coach-llc