As a product manager of an enterprise API, every day of my work life was different, whether we were working on a new feature to our core product or discussing requirements with a customer, there were always interesting problems to be solved.

A typical morning would involve getting to my desk and checking the product backlog for an overview of the status of the sprint to see how the latest iteration of the product is developing. After the team has settled in, we would all log in to our video conferencing platform for the daily stand-up, where every member of the team would discuss what they worked on yesterday, what they were working on that day, and if there was anything blocking their progress. The rest of my time was spent engaged in meetings with my product’s stakeholders, defining the shape and direction of the next release by taking the requirements of the product and writing compelling user stories, carefully considering what would be the best course for the product to take, ensuring that we were building the right product for our users.

Later, in my development role as an associate software engineer, I got the opportunity to take user stories and build them out as working code. We did this using test-driven development, defining what the output of the code would look like before we started actually writing the code. As a developer, I got to challenge myself daily, no solution was the same as the next, one week you could be working on a .NET application and the next week you could be working in JavaScript on something entirely different.

---

As a developer, I got to challenge myself daily, no solution was the same as the next

---

Both roles required an Agile mentality, focusing on delivering value to the user by building products that our users needed. I got to work in amazing cross-functional teams around the world on problems that had an impact on millions of users. My industry roles enabled me to learn so much about how the products which we use every day are built and maintained, and my employer was committed to my continuing development.

For more information

To find out more about our courses or accessing our talent, email edgehub@canterbury.ac.uk.