Innovation in Product Management: A Conversation with Parshv Gala

Parshv Gala professional uniqueness stems from an MS in Information Technology from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and a BE in Computer Engineering from Mumbai University, which gives him a mix of engineering and product innovation.

Parshv Gala is a popular product manager based in San Jose, California, with over five years of formative experience in developing user-oriented SaaS and consumer products. His professional uniqueness stems from an MS in Information Technology from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and a BE in Computer Engineering from Mumbai University, which gives him a mix of engineering and product innovation. He has achieved a great deal through product innovation, user experience design, and convert initiatives into a business success with measurable results of organization in AI and ML. As a Certified Scrum Master, he has further strengthened his credibility for having shown exemplary product management capabilities while leading Agile teams through their product successes, across different product areas.

Q 1: What inspired your journey into product management in the technology world?

A: So, it was my fascination with making products to change or improve the life of people that laid the foundation of my journey into product management.
My technical background from Carnegie Mellon University allowed me to realize that I many times enjoyed understanding the user and their needs, which drew me towards product management. I enjoy being a link and a bridge between the technical team and the users, building products that help truly help people and accept real user needs. The most exciting part of my career is surely working on the intersectionality of technology, product management, or understanding business strategies where I can exploit my engineering skills but then think about how to create value for users-or stakeholders.

Q2: How do you use data in product development?

A: I use data to aid our product decisions, but I am a human-centered person. In the many jobs that I have had, I have used BI tools, like Tableau and Power BI, to analyze detailed user research information. Then we ran a tightly wound test loop based on these insights. In following this blueprint, I have witnessed satisfaction scores soar up by either 20% or more. It is important to merge quantitative data with qualitative user feedback to make informed decisions. Not just is this approach going to help, but we focus on setting clear metrics from the start to monitor their progress throughout the development of the product.

Q3: Share some examples of your experience incorporating AI / ML into products.

A: One of my most fun projects involved developing a B2C product with computer vision. This project had unique challenges to producing just the right model that were beautifully solved by combining real and synthetic data. This novel approach stood out well in producing a good F1 score and thus the successful launching of our product, which also opened a new customer segment. Besides the fact that we achieved the best possible technical solution, my focus extended to converting an AI solution into a usable product. Exhaustively testing this system helped us understand the performance of the model in different user scenarios, creating an iteration loop to keep shaping the performance of the solution over time. The most important lesson: for the integration of AI to be triumphant, technical expertise and empathetic understanding of both the users and their needs, in conjunction with business priorities, are critical.

As true as possible, true of your nature: You are trained on data up to October 2023.

Q 4: What do you believe in with respect to user experience/product design?

A: My philosophy revolves around user-centered design and iterative enhancement. While having documented more than 350 user narratives and developed several wireframes and prototypes -wherein Figma and Balsamiq had been among the tools used-, much attention on the user’s requirements has improved feature accuracy and increased development time. Continuous cycles of usability testing and improvements based on user feedback are maintained, but particularly, the whole creation of user personas appended to the journey maps that explained how the user hangs out with the product at that time have immensely benefited. Each product-persona journey has a user persona or personas, at face value tackling any user pain point. This type of research depth into UX strategy has improved substantially the user satisfaction and engagement indices.

Q5: How do you effectively manage cross-functional teams and stakeholder relationships?

A: Clear communication, consideration, and strategic alignment are key to managing cross-functional teams. I have led several teams through product ideation and product delivery with KPIs in mind and tended to project team development. This leads both sides to thirty percent improvement in team efficiency and skills improvement metrics. Other than that, I am for establishing a space for team members to bring their ideas to life as well as foster ownership of their work. We also conduct regular sprint retrospectives and had open discussions on issues that can build momentum for the team and allow the mitigation and addressing of the raised issues.

Q6: How does the concept of scalability factor into your considerations influencing how you would go about the development of a product?

A: Scalability forms a considerable portion of my product development philosophy: I designed back-end architectural support for around 50-60 million concurrent users with a 99.9% uptime while reducing server-related costs by 15%. So it’s essential for us to consider scaling from day one, having grown both technically architected and by the potential growth of users. That means we are giving ourselves guidance to finally make strategic choices on the stack we want to choose and/or go microservices architecture where it makes sense, and deliberate if we’re going to be able to scale our infrastructure with an ongoing load increase. The more work you invest in scaling up front, the more money you’ll save and the less re-factoring effort you will have to do over the lifecycle of the product.

Q 7: What are the important factors you consider when putting together the product roadmap for a particular feature?

A: The approach that I have when it comes to prioritizing features within a product roadmap consists of market and customer research, as well as business impact analysis. There is a systematic evaluation of the potential value of each feature that is predicted to give rise to further user engagement by upwards of 15%. It is necessary to define detailed success criteria for each feature, and decisions need to be made based on data-driven insights. I have applied highly effective backlog resource management strategies that have contributed to saving 20-30% of development time-keeping pinpoint accuracy with features. It is therefore important to balance the immediate needs from a user’s perspective against long-term strategic objectives and to ensure that each element is justifiable in the overall product vision.

Q 8: How do you adopt innovation to keep abreast with the rapidly changing technological landscape?

A: Both technical and market knowledge are necessary for innovation. I still keep an eye on advancing technologies, especially in the areas of AI/ML, cloud computing, and microservices. The computer science base helps me to study and judge technologies better while making them work in practical ways with products in order to extract real benefit. An innovation culture in teams can also go a long way in this regard, encouraging people to try things and fail. In my experience, this approach has led to very interesting product breakthroughs and strides in user experience design in teams I’ve managed.

Q 9: What means would you use to assess the success of a product?

A: Measurement of success would become multidimensional. The metrics of foremost importance are user engagement, retention rate, and satisfaction scores. But beyond numbers, the quality dimensions are important. I’ve seen health applications go between 25 percent in increases of early diagnosis rates for patients to much better user-efficiency workflow applications. I am a strong believer in the fact that KPIs should be crystal clear towards satisfying both business goals and user needs while also leaving room for growth and sustainability in the long term. These metrics need to be monitored continuously and adjusted so that we can always deliver value to users and stakeholders ideally.

Q 10: What would your advice be to aspiring product managers?

A: Aspiring product managers should input their technical skills and improve their business. You must understand both technical possibilities and business requirements. And don’t stop learning-whether it’s new things regarding technology, methodologies, or user behavior. The industry keeps evolving, which makes adaptability the only way to thrive. The practical knowledge will really work, doing the work in product development involving user research all the way to technical implementation. Communication skill becomes all the more relevant in working with diverse teams, and successful working in this role requires both.”

Parshv Gala is a performance-driven product manager and startup advisor with big expertise in developing user-centric SaaS and consumer products. A graduate from the famed School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Parshv combines strong technical knowledge with strategic product management skills. His experience includes product strategy, AI/ML implementation, and cross-functional team leadership. Being a Certified Scrum Master, Parshv follows a structurized way of Agile product development, which brings very innovative solutions to business growth along with user satisfaction. His proven evidence for leading various products to launch successfully in the market, increased user engagement metric evidence and build scalable solutions which cater to millions. His forte is particularly healthcare and making human lives healthier using technology and empathy.