On February 26, the online conference Product Management Day was held at the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg State University (GSOM SPbU). The Business School's alumni working as product managers at Yandex.Drive, Miro and Packa CRM spoke about the specifics of their work.

Discussing the approach to product management, the experts noted the trend towards short-term planning. “In the current world, where everything is changing very quickly, it is difficult to think far away: you can only indicate the direction,” said Daria Vylegzhanina, a 2013 MIB alumna, product manager at Yandex.Drive.

MIM 2011 alumnus, Miro product manager Timm Schrago spoke about how strategic planning works in a B2B2C service: “In our company, strategy is perceived as a benchmark, it sets a vector: what we do, what we don’t do. In addition, we use such a tool as a Painted Picture of the future, which both inspires and takes into account the planned markets, size and organization. This approach helps to prioritize and visualize. ”

MIM 2017 alumnus, co-founder of the Pachka CRM system Grigory Lyubachev talked about the difference between the work of a product manager in corporations and the entrepreneurial sphere: “If a specialist has a desire to develop expertise in any one area, then it is better to work in a large company with more resources and a clear division of responsibilities. In a startup, you have the opportunity to cover everything from A to Z and influence different stages of work. "

At the end of the conversation, the speakers recommended to the students resources for further development:

• YouTube of Yandex Management School (available in Russian only)
• YCombinator Newsr
• First Round Capital
• YCombinator Essays
• Blog Reforge
• Where to learn PM skills by Product Sense
• Miro for Education

The Product Management Day conference was held as part of the TalentUp! mentoring program. The event was moderated by Maria Morozova, a 4th year student at GSOM SPbU.