The SPECTRUM club is one of the core technical societies of the College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneshwar founded in 2015 by Mr.Bikram Keshari Panda(2015 graduate), scrutinizing on the sole motive of Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering branch having a club of its own.

Apart from being involved in a plethora of competitions and technical events, the club decided to start its very own "Alumni Talk Series" called "Chit-Chat with Alumni".

The first season of the series served as a torch bearer for the students to connect with their seniors contributing in both their personal and professional development. And we have continued to strengthen the bond even further with the Second Series.

The sixth episode of Season 2 was first hosted on the 20th of February, 2022 and the speaker for the evening was Mr. Ramakanta Sahu.

Mr. Ramakanta Sahu is a pass out of the 2010 batch from Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering, CET-B. He has completed his Master’s in Business Administrations from IIM Bangalore, with a specialisation in Strategy and Finance. He is also the Co-founder at Stealth Start-up. He has also worked as Strategy Consultant at Monitor Deloitte. He has had a diverse experience in the field of Strategy and management for more than 10 years. Currently, he is positioned at PayPal as a member of Product Management and Strategy division.

He started out with briefly introducing himself, talking about his life and switched over to his professional career. He walked us through his professional life touching up on all the experiences that he has had while working in various companies at various positions. He talked to us about the various career opportunities in Product Management.

Mentioning the role, he went on to explain product management in the simplest terms possible, the first point being that one is not the manager of anyone. Product managers get maximum collaborations from engineers and designers working together in developing a product and they sit between multiple areas of the company acting as a communicator. Product Management is the intersection of three aspects - UI/UX, Technology and Business.

According to him, the engineers focus on hard technical challenges. Product managers primarily distil all the noise in the data in terms of what’s needed and what’s not. They look at matrices to decide what to do next and the things that are important, prioritizing the customers.

He moved on to the next important thing of what a product really is and talked about the various roles of product managers working in such products. He then threw some light on the lifecycle of Product Management, bucketed into five areas. Understanding User needs to solve the market problem and understand what the competitors are doing after having keen knowledge of the product developed. Developing product strategy is essentially understanding the tech feasibility and the product definition with the key stakeholders. Building and developing a roadmap by understanding backlogs and prioritizing the products. Iterative development is essentially where feature product is designed, developed and tested in repeated cycles. Launching and scaling the product is a marketing aspect which is the final step.

After elucidating the whole job aspect of product management, he talked about the roadmap to being a product manager. He advised to always think from customer’s standpoint as that is the most important aspect there is while developing a product. To have a habit of writing is important for it can clear vision of the people involved in the product. Meeting and communicating with other managers provides a plethora of new ideas and opportunities to be worked upon. Lastly, reading a lot of books to increase knowledge on the subject of project management is a must.

He concluded the session by providing some enriching thoughts that would help us in all our endeavors, no matter what we choose to pursue. Those are:

The conference was followed by an interactive Q n A with students asking questions ranging from various aspects of his life to education to career opportunities.

It was an honor to have interacted with him. We wish him all the best for all his future endeavors!