What is your current professional position? How did you get here?
I am Senior Product Manager at a startup in Berlin that develops a Fitness and Nutrition app. My daily work involves two important phases of product development: Discovery and Delivery. Discovery is the phase where I look at competing apps, feedback from our users, and think of ideas for new product features. Delivery is about planning (in terms of timings), designing (creating designs and mockups) and describing (defining technical and product requirements) those features in detail to be implemented by the development teams. In the end I have to ensure that the initial idea is well implemented and evaluate its success with the users. This is a job where no two days are the same and where I learn something new every day :) I didn’t become Product Manager from one day to the other, of course, and I can say that the “role” of a PM is not yet learned in university courses, but comes with trying different roles in different organizations. In my case, I started my professional career in a professional traineeship in Sales, then I moved to INESC TEC where I did my master’s and worked as Project Manager and Researcher in several projects of the Institute. I then moved to a software company where I started as a junior Product Owner (basically, getting the business needs and turning them into requirements for the developers) and grew in this Product area in several different companies and products (from online game applications, travel booking, internal business platforms, etc). I would say that the trick is to look for what you like, learn as much as you can from the people you work with and never stand still!
How did MCI contribute to your career path?
It’s a curious story my time at MCI. When I graduated in Information Science I had no idea what I wanted to do professionally. I always felt more the “bug” for the technological area, requirements gathering, project planning, etc. Basically I always liked to try to transform complex ideas into something structured and organized, to transform user needs into tangible requirements that can be easily understood by people or systems and more easily implemented. Entering the MCI allowed me to reflect more on this predilection of mine and to realize what career path I would like to follow. The structure of the master’s degree, which touched on various topics related to information management, organization, and planning, provided me with a more “big picture” perspective and less focus on overly specialized tasks, which proved to be super important as I began my career path. I currently work closely with programmers and senior management, and the fact that I had training that touched on more technological aspects of how systems, databases, etc. work, but also how requirements are defined, a project is managed, and a project is communicated, provided me with the tools to easily be the “bridge” between the technical/programming teams and Senior Management
Given your experience, would you recommend MCI to anyone who wants to become a professional in the field of Information Management? Why would you recommend it?
I think that the field of Information Management is currently difficult to compartmentalize – everything is information, in any organization it is important to structure it in a way that it can be easily used and transformed by people and/or information systems – whether it is a library, research center, project company, or start-up. The MCI provides, in my view, a holistic perspective on this area that allows flexibility in a constantly changing job market. The MCI is an important launching pad, but by no means should it be the last stage of learning – it is up to us to stay curious about new topics, technologies, research methodologies, and reinvent ourselves with every professional change!