--- aliases: - Manager 1:1 tags: [] --- ##### Sai - leadership stories quotes - Do good work and communicate that two levels up - Do something that no one is asking you to do - PM sync up with Sai - - Each PM should have firm understanding on how they'll strategize their product - Foster product thinking on concrete outcomes for your products ##### Sita - leadership stories quotes - Comfort and Growth don't sit in the same boat! ##### Notes - [[Manager 1-1s - Questions to Ask]] [[Friyana Irani]] ### 2023 - ##### Apr 3 - 1:1 1. FY24 will be incremental changes for DCQO 2. Making DCQO lighter and optimizing OBG are 2 changes that'll define success by end of FY25 3. Need to build a grander vision for DCQO to align smaller architecture initiatives going forward - ##### Apr 27 - 1:1 - Next big thing for DCQO - Project simplification - have overarching view - aaS modeled architecture - Market research on best practices - eCommerce (Amazon, Shopify), Insurance industry, Car dealer industry - Removal of unnecessary services - Making DCQO lighter and optimizing OBG - QBR - 4th May - Presenting a view to Sarika - Large Quote - Phase 1 - current solution - Phase 2 - move to eventing model on OMCS flow for order submission, build on top of order resiliency - Work on CPQ combined growth board - Kunal, Tarun and Saurabh - ##### May 10 - 1:1 - DCQO blueprint of next gen - Transact Insights - start with simpler insight we can solve for, ML insights will need upskilling - Simplification of DCQO - Tell Dell and eNPS are coming soon - Back to office - start with 1 day per week - ##### May 10 - DCQO client communications - Praveen, Rakhi, Saurabh sync - Internal and external communications - - QBR at Sarika level - Release demos are a overhead - Newsletter emails are not read by most stakeholders - Identify lead client experience going live and highlight capability to other clients. - Clients: - "What's in it for me" needs to be clear. - Hook - big font, concise details, visuals - Can also be used for exec communication - ##### May 25 - 1:1 - Ways to show increased willingness to take up more scope - People manager program - ITLP will help, 9 months long, leadership, networking, improving your influence, - Find a mentor - Praveen can help find someone outside CP org - Paid courses - offline - ##### May 30 - Praveen's update - Resign from Dell, moving out - Sai will take over DCQO, all will report to Sai - ##### Jun 12 - Sai 1:1 - How are you doing with the workload? - Quick background - How do you want product line leads to run the show? - I am willing to lead product teams in future, how should I prepare towards it? - In terms of deciding on building new capabilities on PC funds, need your input. DCQO v4 vs v3 enhanced - ##### Jul 18 - Sai 1:1 - Feedback on my performance and areas where I can improve - Strengths: - Strong PM mindset, visionary thinking, Harsh Acharya is a great visionary, Siva (from Delivery Promise) - Strong ability to put structured vision document - Improvement areas: - Emotional element that needs to be balanced in your behavior, need to stay calm in tense situations. - Career, ambitions - Interested in finance? - Cognizance of what effort it takes to have an initiative - be able to own PnL - ##### Jul 25 - Sai 1:1 - Lot of promise in your PM expertise - Opportunities - options - Increase surface area: More product lines, beyond DCQO - Greg likes customer journey/experience - Sarika wants to implement northstar v4 everywhere. - Org change proposal in line - Craig Friedman - does analytics and ML projects. They do discovery activity too based on market price data - Imagine our journeys end to end to enable commerce - ##### Aug 1 - Sai 1:1 - ML based efforts on calculating probability of order - Business ideas on transact insights: - Create nudge marketing for items with high probability of sale - Optimize quote/cart resources when such items are present - cache resources to increase performance - Show nudge message in UX to user to convert to order - What are the cost saving opportunities here? Millions saved doing what? - Identify ways of improving inventory - 20% of items are purchased 100% of times - - ![[Pasted image 20230801132645.png]] - Fed workshop - Geo partitioning - how to measure benefits? - Action: If we have opportunity for payments, DCQO - what capabilities can be built in synergy with each other? - Sarika ask - global portal - Loretta Fellers. Check with Sita or Giri if they have any insights. - Personal stretch goal: patent filing - ##### Aug 8 - Sai 1:1 - Presented IDP, feedback: it feels well planned, achievable - SaaS or monetization topic - intent is to prepare a biz plan on buying infra as a service - Sai to add me to meeting invite where leaders discuss this. - You need to have a successor / backup plan if you're thinking of moving to a bigger role - Pricing model for subscription - base level - Amazon product exchange - like a barter system - have exclusive catalog - How about a similar model for laptops? - Visionary thinkers: Harsh Acharya, Siva from ATS svc - ##### Aug 15 - Sai 1:1 - v4 update - can be discussed later - Northstar discussion with H2 prioritization - Pressure on getting out of enterprise Mongo - Recommendation is to use Percona dB - Huge cost reduction - 10x cheaper - Mongo execs didn't treat Dell execs well - BigCommerce and Costco activity - DCQO work - Customer journey calls - decides the goals - Find opportunities to work on performance - What do our PMs do on API metrics data? - ##### Sep 12 - Sai 1:1 - **DCQO North star and QBR:** - Check with Sai if this north star approach can be discussed at Sarika level or with other leaders in CP and Ashish/Milan/Sita/Julian - Meeting: **Q2 Reviews & Demos (Agenda Included)** - QBR doc, ask what is the point of bringing forward looking view if no one reads through it or shares feedback? What is the right channel/forum to get feedback on DCQO northstar view? - 2 new workstreams coming on urgent basis - Database archiving to save cost - Network resiliency to avoid data center failure corner cases - MongoDB costs $1M/year, but only paying for $400K/year - Cost of operation drops to $300K because of hot archival, saves $2M - ##### Sep 19 - Sai 1:1 - Talked about All Hands and Percona dB a bit, - Mentor PMs on how to bring product mindset - FY25 initiative suggestion ideas are open - ##### Sep 26 - Sai 1:1 - How am I viewed by leadership? - Feedback on All Hands? - Slide content was good. - Camera placement was off - that takes away the engagement - I didn't see effectiveness in your delivery, you were not intellectual - We need to do better. - Transact Events - there'll be a meeting with architect. - Mentor product managers on building data analytics skills. - Jeff Boudreau will lead AI. He is a very effective leader. Investing in AI is the right thing to do. Gen AI is a hot topic. Think about Gen AI capabilities in our backlog... Have POV on use cases in DCQO. - ##### Oct 4 - Get more exposure with leaders - Define my role better please: Couple of issues: - Friyana is overstepping my role as product line manager at times: Recent examples - Stealth mode collaboration with Anurag Sharma and DSA team, Jayanth looped in Friyana cause of dev capacity requirement but didn't loop me in thinking this is not a new capability. - Increasing adoption of mergequote/large transaction work to DSA and walking them through the capability while it is clearly the job of product managers to onboard clients on existing capabilities. - v4 enablement related coordination, she wants to take up all opportunities where we have DCQO representation to Sarika. - MABD and FDD dates should persist on copy quote/Order - I am not clear on where to draw the line for what I should lead vs what Friyana should lead. Plus, what are the responsibilities of PLM when onboarding clients on to existing DCQO capabilities. I don't see this problem with Surendra at all. - v4 adoption - Saravanan set up call but have Jayanth and Friyana on invite, and not me, again as expected. - Be honest, what is the biggest thing that’s holding me back right now? - ##### Oct 18 - **Conflict with Friyana:** I have been wanting to bring this up for some time now. I’m observing that topics are sometimes taken over by Friyana. This includes leader/stakeholder discussions too where I am not even in loop sometimes and she acts as PLM without consulting/asking me. Recent examples - 1. Onboarding DSA for large transactions capability - Friyana went to lead discussions that I am supposed to lead. I was surprised cause I had suggested DSA about this earlier. 2. the ongoing v4 adoption and std config v4 - exception order issue. Friyana went ahead and set up a call with CPQ stakeholders by consulting with Hemant while I had done the initial discussion with Vipin & team. 3. Building future POV on Transact Contact to store PII customer info - I wanted to have this discussed and Friyana stopped and deprioritized it without consulting or giving any reason. Where do I draw the line on what I should do as DCQO PLM and what Friyana does. I never see this issue with Surendra. It feels like my role is taken over by Friyana and sometimes by surprise in unfriendly manner... I would like to know what ownership I have as PLM and what Friyana/Surendra will own. I wanted to know your view before I reach out to Friyana about this. Also please let me know if I am overthinking here. I may be having a blind spot/biased opinion. - You're A+ grade product manager. - 1:1 with Sarika - how do you present will differentiate, she likes superlative tone. - Path to I10 - are you the number one choice among the leaders? Bhanu, Hemant, Marc, Haseeb - critical votes from Sarika - Sarika likes resiliency, performance, v4, customer experience, reduce waste. - January, February - use it for your marketing. ##### Oct 24 - Sarika meeting feedback - positive overall, - Did well on video - Not giving goosebumps, your delivery needs to get punchy, use less words but more punchy. - Q3 reviews approaching - use it well - Follow up of Transact Insights - where you can use a better speech delivery - Sarika Puri and Paul Riedel level discussion - Focus our product capacity: Eventing, data archival, performance, resiliency ##### Nov 14 - Sai - Harsh connect to get feedback on transact insights - Sai - Send note to Paul - Saurabh - Send note to Adi - recently moved to Paul's org ##### Nov 21 - You belong to DTX - Connect with Greg Bowen - [ ] Get time on Greg's calendar to talk transact insights - Career growth - - Cart, quote, payments - we are at mercy of vendor for payments - need to derisk - ##### Dec 5 Paul Riedel - Presentation on TxInsights - Verbose But great job, very impressed. Feedback - pursue a people manager role? Engineering manager. Sarika was calibrating for out of cycle promotions - something to think about Promotion talk: I9 to M9 is easier, I9 to I10 and then to M10 Year 1 - your name should be discussed, might not get promoted Year 2 - you will be up for promotion ### 2024 ##### Jan 16 - Sarika 1:1 Career conversation with Sarika Internal org changes in Bhanu's space, that didn't materialize. Jenn F is not making any changes/promotions this year. Have a call with Sarika, she needs to hear you. Stay concise. Try to put larger than life persona. She liked TxInsights discussion with Paul. You're trying to be a thought leader. Keep energy, tempo a bit high. Tell her that you're willing to explore - to become a manager. Strategy session prep - TxInsights should get picked up in Q1 - Review on TxEvents Review on TxPricing manager Introduce versioning and lifespan of every version Feb has TxExperience strategy sessions - do homework on 2-3 topics, Using opportunity tree Using AI based topics - How will AI help us transact differently. 2-3 days - 2 hours a day - Identify topics, and during the session - brainstorm and find out actions during the session ##### Jan 23 - Prep for 6th Feb Sarika meeting - Show IDP, talk about career ambitions. - Sarika is struggling to sell v4 and TxProduct story - What success metrics we should showcase - Come up with a logical story to DSA for value of TxProduct - exec summary example, - Increase efficiency, save money initiative - Infrastructure, software licensing - v2 vs v4. - v2 had 2 VM boxes - per service we need 600 instances per data center - Developer resources - i10 vs M9 - keep the doors open for both ##### Feb 6 - - Feedback about me - when Sai took over, the feedback he got about me is that I am a difficult personality to handle, but that hasn't been true with me - Your thinking is very fresh, amazed with your efforts - Very good strategic thinker, area of improvement: interpersonal relationships with people. People manager aspect. Dealing with humans is the toughest job out there - I want you to help DCQO PMs and ensure their readiness to be your backfill - Payments - Kajal, Manosha are doing well but don't have good guidance, they're making them more tactical - Set up separate time with them ##### Feb 14 - Friyana getting handpicked for all strategically important projects - Hot archival - Quote purging initiative - Stealth architecture pilot - Order resiliency - GOP launches - Increase your exec presence in FY25 - TxProduct vs OBLite conversation - build tradeoffs and point of view - Adarsh, Mohan, ##### Feb 20 - Updated Sai on Transact Insights A/B test experiment status - ZBB - what's your point of view - Availability, stability, scale (long tail latency endpoints) - Transact insights review with internal team members - kickoff session to align stakeholders - Plan for a call after ZBB conversation is done ##### Feb 27 - All Hands - ZBB view with few bullet points on H1 FY25, Rakhi - Feedback - your representation to Sarika and Jenn, find topics going forward that you can represent. - Positives - true product thinking - Negatives - details of delivery, I don't see Saurabh, MCC, OMOD related - need to understand details - Eventing - extend vision beyond shop, convert Sarika into your sponsor for eventing - Budget clarifications ##### Mar 19 - Eventing architecture - need resource alignment on quote, product and pricing svc from Bhanu, Hemant - Product - Talk to Sivakumar, Sunita to understand thick events, telling what changed in product/ordercode - Price - - Call series to talk eventing next steps - Unified cart & checkout call - get added - V4 performance - Strategy session to identify next steps in our product northstar - Sai to set up a call - PMs need to use data more ##### Mar 26 - V4 transact topic - does not have strength - Your info gathering, content and presentation is great - Delivery needs to improve, it feels scripted. When you tend to deliver, you seem to have pauses, storytelling should come with an excitement. Make it more dramatic going forward. - TxInsights - write to Paul and Harsh - Also have 1:1 with Harsh and Paul - Harsh's product perspectives are better than others ##### Apr 2 - Opportunity to reduce contractors, optimize our resources ##### Apr 9 - TTI improvements - Harsh is looking for combined view of platform and UX improvements - Have Jira work items for TTI improvements identified - Check with Sriram, Karthi - Discussed about piloting Transact Insights and AI-based item caching together with Thameem and couple of FTEs - Sai to get back after discussing with Surendra and Friyana - Quote Share redesign - Discussed our tradeoff options and clarified that capacity needs to be reduced on TTI improvement and US CSB dell.com v4 workstreams for Q2 so that eventing work can be taken up. ##### Apr 16 - Told Sarika that DCQO doesn't have any money for online - Cart-checkout - Surendra wasn't coming out right - Schedule for a stakeholder review - present ZBB view translated into growth board / roadmap view ##### Apr 23 - Am I one of the top 3 performers in your team? - Potential opportunity in identity space for product manager position - Rakhi could go there, you can take up transact as a whole - Growth board: - Table showing above the line and below the line - Team structure (optional) - Highlights from previous quarter ##### May 7 - Growth board: Schedule it - Selling things? Highlights of Q1? Overall team motivation is a bit low - Spoorthi - Can we understand how to reduce API traffic? DCQO gets millions of calls but Dell doesn't create so many orders or quotes - FY25 goals - Sai to get back - Transact insights - talk to Anshul to submit idea with Monica Younger and Travis Cain ##### May 14 - Unmonitored hosts is a bit noisy ##### May 21 - Feedback on growth board - Observation on PM participation - Exec or leader alignment to drive future investments ##### May 28 - Transact insights - Cart & Quote - Rate limiting - Sai to schedule meeting on eventing. Another meeting to discuss strategic priorities. ##### Jun 4 - Cart quote unifying - in one team - Platform of Events and Insights - in one team ##### Jun 11 - Sita leading DCQO, Payments and UX teams - DCQO and cart-checkout UX, DSA purchase, PQTO, B2B buyer are coming together under one leader - with Sita - Objectives of how to rethink - End of the meeting with UX architects - need - Buyer UX has buyer API which interacts with commerce platform - Purchase API talks to cart and salesorder API - If purchase and DCQO is one team, how we can optimize. If we have atomic MFEs, can we have better integration? - Sarika > Chris Cowger - Product, price transformation, content - Julian > Harsh - Configurator, ISG configurator, DSC configurator, one config - Dushyant > Harsh - Shop, Search - Raj Kaimal > Harsh - Sita > Harsh > Jenn - Will Hudson > Jenn - Do your presentation to Harsh really well. 17 VPs and SVPs, 5 are already gone, 2 more are ready to go ##### Jun 19 - Sita 1:1 - I understand that you have several problems to deal with right now so I will keep this easy. - Show excitement, mentorship, positive feedback from Lisa - I wanted to offer help. As you are trying to connect the pieces together, if I can take care of anything immediately on the product side, do let me know. From where I sit, I see we'll need help in 3 areas where I can offer you leverage: - Long-term strategic thinker, - As you know, I have been thinking about the architecture change from early on, have many ideas to build upon. - Someone who can act fast, - I can connect the dots and understand impact quickly. For example, when a PM went on maternity, I was their backup and introduced a new gen configurable search API which reduced 50% of our efforts. - Someone with deep business acumen - For example, I was in PG as technical product manager for Precision workstations that bring $1B a year revenue for Dell. ##### Jun 21 - Sita 1:1 - Dell purchase channel overview - Revenue, margin overview by purchase channel - Frictionless overview by purchase channel and sub-channel for top 5 purchase channels - Key 4 metrics - Conversion Rate, Frictionless Rate, Sales Productivity (Avg revenue per sales rep), CSAT - DCQO overview - high level - 800 Quotes per min and 235 Carts per sec - 1B calls/week, 50% calls going to item svc - Platform strategy thinking - high level - Bet on short term-long term benefits - Keep product architecture fluid - Cart, quote, payment, order - 4 verticals ##### Sai - Commerce should be okay with NDA changes. - PLM in PremierConnect - Lisa and Rashmi - inbound and outbound - Rashmi moving out ##### Aug 7 - Sumedha 1:1 - Visualize intake process - Meeting series - - Career conversations - Self assessment - 3-5 year goals - Action plan around it - block 45 min for roadmap - next 1:1 call - IDP - How do you like to run product teams? - Teams - What I am good at - Fielding requirements across multiple competing workstreams - Prioritizing and being ok saying no - Slicing data and business metrics myself using financial data - Where I need help to improve the way we do product - Northstar vision alignment and execution - align key tenets, align priorities on Maverick + Unified Basket developments for H2 roadmap - Challenges with platform product management - requires longer term and strategic thinking - Streamlining and increasing product mindset within the team - discovering problems to solve - Analytical mindset - getting comfortable with key datasets such as splunk, FDM, DCS, powerBI dashboards - Tactical stuff - Get added to email groups - dcs.dcqo.pms@dell.com dcqo_leads@dell.com ##### Sep 13 - Feedback from my presentation to Harsh on UB. - For i10, deliver on across product line, or across experience outcome. Maverick-UB execution can showcase you can deliver a complex workstream. - You need to work on storytelling, get better exponentially. Focus on why it matters. - Transact insights - pick a customer, pick where they struggled and how your idea will help. - Your UB presentation felt like a lot like about you or your idea. Need to be humble. and being a team player is critical. Great at taking people along for credit. Use we vs I. That builds trust. Build shared credit. - Harsh's feedback - 'that's great feedback' instead of saying 'that's exactly the feedback I was looking for'. - IDP: Put this as next steps. - Quarterly problem-solution tree alignment. - Build template. - Help understand how it starts and how it prioritizes roadmap. - Walk through over a separate call. Pre-requisite to this tree, how does it get translated into roadmap. - Document these steps. - Create a template for TPX. - Hypothesis roadmap to be created. - Opportunities to get in front of more leaders as part of my IDP next steps. I am looking to grow my responsibilities + have a growth path. - [ ] Insights - follow up call - [ ] Opportunity tree for TPX - follow up call along with expected process ##### Sep 17 feedback on communication - Language matters. Your passion can also create a perception that that you’re only passionate about one thing. - Work on introducing new concepts to someone. Sita didn’t want you to talk to Hari because she thought you may not tell a good story. Validate this hypothesis if it’s true. - Grow trust with Sumedha by working with her on improving presentation skills. ##### Sep 26 - How do I make sure that I bridge the 2%? - Ask Sita after you ask Sumedha - that hey Sita, what are my chances of promotion in the next cycle? What can I do to increase my chances? I understand it’s a 360 review process so I wanted your opinion. ##### Oct 7 - Career - How does my path to i10 look like? - Current workstreams - Unified Basket - TxProduct, TxPrice integration - Customer, Contact integration - Reporting & Analytics Use case whiteboarding - Client integrations - Big 4 UX, GOAL, ICE, GCP - Client impact beyond big 4 - UB phase 2 outcomes to be prioritized - Self-serve consolidated checkout - need to clarify goals and expectations - Repeat buy use cases in Full Catalog, DSC and etc. - Multi quote share - future design iterations - Personalized nudges / transact insights - Next steps for API dev and UX changes - Auto creation of quote thru opportunity ID - Unified chat - quo AIte use case discovery - Albert Pina - ask for POC for standard config to discuss UB - Aboli - discuss std config on UB - Efrat’s team - call to talk UB ##### Oct 11 - Need opportunities and safe space to bring thought leadership and ideas that may be different from current thinking - - Stakeholder Intakes -- These need to be aligned with company priorities - Thought Backlog -- what is thought backlog? how will we prioritize from thought backlog? - Commitments - Need opportunities to showcase my skills in front of leaders - - Harsh's staff - I could have presented or participated when UB was discussed first time - Sita's staff on Unified Basket - Giri's staff - I could have presented Unified Basket to them - Moving Manpreet to payments - large payment integration - option 1 is Manpreet manages in parallel manages gateways till Q4. option 2 is Nilotpal - Path for i10 - Nobody's getting an i10, based on Harsh's feedback... let's have a quarterly conversation around this - Building relationships. Need to work on buy-in within CXLP structure - one client on UB is good enough story. - Is there a business need? Tied around economic environment, - Conversations need to make sense about vision and bigger than you - language change - Huddle topics - manage backlog, work with PMs to manage dates and topics, structure the pitch format using hypothesis format, KPIs, work with Feny on aligning on a format - ##### Oct 25 Headcount - Sumedha (22) Ted (23) Amit (20) - Deloitte engagements on several topics - - CRE - Returns, Exchanges - Quote inventory integrations - UB 60-day, 90-day scope discussions - UB phase 2 scope alignments with CXLP leads - Adarsh, Keith, Kashif - Self-serve consolidated checkout scope and DnF - Client integrations beyond Big 4 UX - MA SavedItems, ISG Solution, EBI, ICE, GCP - Strategy huddle - 1 hour call. Roadmap discussion for first 30-minutes. Rest 30-min for pitches. 10min pitch + 5min QnA. - Feny - ##### Nov 8 - Need opportunities and recognition of efforts internally to Sumedha's team and in Sita's org on following workstreams - UB platform APIs made live in SIT in record times - Transact KDDs aligned with Hari, Sita - Scope alignments on UB with all UX clients for heartbeat and post-heartbeat - continuous - Alignments with ISG Solutions team and MyAccount Saved Items team - Sessions with several DTX and BTO team-members (Sumit, Jeremy, Kelly from DTX, Tiffany, Rajiv from BTO) to market what Unified Basket is bringing next year - Where would you stack rank me in path to i10 across your team? - Feedback on Harsh review - Top 3 things to achieve - need to hear, where you need help, should've - Unified AI experience - centralize LLM, intent based engine. - Garima Doubal and Aaron Marr - Stretch yourself for a workflow where we don't have a chatbot, think critically that doesn't have - User triggered and non-user triggered - [ ] Customer recordings - Check with Ankur - I don't stack rank, yes you have what it takes to be an i10, but you should know readiness for i10, UB is the perfect example of handling complex project. Influencing other people, having strong relationships is equally important. Functional leadership role. - AI opportunities that we need to think through. Maybe tag along in Sales Modernization workstreams. - ##### Jan 28 - FY26 focus area - Build on concept for cart and eQuote evolution that will help address our CSAT concerns leveraging UB capabilities ##### Feb 11 - Tentative plan - Apr 4th week - May 1st week - working with potential reduced capacity - May 2nd week - Jun 2nd week - personal off - My backup - Product roadmap and delivery - PLM? Shivani (CST)?, Nilotpal (IST)? - Program - Ranjit - Architecture - Jayanth, Mohan - Jun-Jul - working full capacity - Aug 1st week - Oct 4th week - paternity - Nov onwards - working full capacity Peanut app to connect with moms  Rajitha - doesn't like getting questioned in front of her team  Grooming process - Ted needs help with online quote space, Rouseau may lead it  Shivani - needs a development plan, work with Ted on this ##### Feb 25 - Ripa - micro-moments can benefit via insights shown as nudges. Mention that we are working with Felisha to integrate with persona - Garima - ask to get this topic into their staff - Aboli - have insights platform discussed with her for ISG Solutions - Backup plan - Paulo - for insights platform work - Nitika-Feny - for UB-ISG Solution integration work, UB API integration - Devanand - for existing DCQO APIs - Rajitha - for UB and insights platform delivery -