At the beginning of my career I built my first piece of software as a product manager. It was a complete disaster and I didn't touch software for a while after it.

I was working in the innovation department of a big corporation and was asked to redesign the idea management system (= basically a glorified digital suggestion box). I looked at the current system, interviewed key stakeholders, got assigned a developer and off we went. I thought I was going to knock this out of the park. But I failed.

I felt helpless because I did not understand what I could have done better.

Up to that point in my life I had not really known failure. Sure, I had failed exams in university. But his was always because I hadn't studied hard enough. Every time I really wanted to achieve something, I did.

This was different. I had put all of myself into it. We launched successfully, but instead of solving all the problems it just created more problems downstream.

I had not set myself up for success

The mission I had been given was flawed but I was too junior and too inexperienced to question it. The real problem was not a more efficient system to collect ideas but a better way to focus the creativity of thousand of people on the most relevant challenges of our business. My product didn't not address that at all.

Product Management is my answer to never make these mistakes again.

I'm sharing this because so much of the discussion around product management these days centres around how you measure something or which framework to use. It's all points you can discuss but arguably the most important thing is building the right thing.

And Product Management does that. It helps me avoid painful mistakes and gives me guidance on what is important and how to turn unknown unknowns into known knowns.