Product Management Career Day: An Adventure in Teaching Kids

Last Wednesday was ‘career day’ at my fifth grade daughter’s school. They’d asked any parents with “interesting” careers to volunteer; figuring that product management should count, I signed up.

I had thought that it would only be fifth graders that I’d be teaching; they told me that there would be 5 classes, and that I’d be in the same room the whole time. With about ~20 kids per class, for 2.5 hrs, it sounded difficult, but doable. That’s what I thought, anyway…

Surprise! Teach the WHOLE School!

whiteboard from the class where I didn't have a computer for my presentation.

When I got there, it turned out to be 6 classes, for all of the grades – that’s 3rd through 5th at my daughter’s school – with 40+ kids per class! Each class was in a different room, and the schedule they gave me was less than accurate in terms of which room I was supposed to be in. In the last room, there wasn’t even a computer, so I did the presentation with a whiteboard (that was probably my best class, actually!)

While it was an exhausting experience, it was also a rewarding one. I’m sharing more about that experience in case anyone else is doing a ‘product management career day,’ and wants to use any of what I put together for the kids.

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Introduce your deliverable to start off right

During my recent presentation on “The Usability of Deliverables: Making Deliverables Easier to Present and Use,” I focused most of my time on the first section, “introducing the deliverable.”

This is a relatively easy thing to do that can help prevent a lot of confusion and misunderstandings. And it’s not UX-specific – anyone who presents anything can benefit from this. A developer came up after the presentation and told me how useful he’d found it.  

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