Product management for software development companies in Riyadh

The CTO vs Standing Quo collection research how tech leaders problem the present state of affairs at their firm to push it towards a brand new peak … or to put it aside from doom.

“It’s a sport of constructing the proper issues on the proper time.”

A fast look at Muhammed Zaulifqar’s LinkedIn profile reveals his deep curiosity in Saudi Arabia’s product administration panorama.

Muhammed acknowledges the fast tempo of development the KSA software program business is experiencing however warns of challenges which might be impeding its potential. You may be a part of the answer should you think about his product administration recommendation.

On this interview, Muhammed:

• talks about latest developments in KSA and why the Saudi software program business is now extra aggressive than ever,
• reveals each strengths and weaknesses of the native expertise pool of product managers and builders,
• explains why having locals on board remains to be important to succeeding in KSA and how  Saudi firms can mix native and overseas expertise for the most effective impact.

About Muhammed

Say as-salamu alaykum to Muhammed

Prem Markowski: As-salamu alaykum, Muhammed. Evidently 2024 has been a vital 12 months in Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation. For instance, the Nationwide Information Financial institution has centralized lots of of information providers, fostering higher collaboration between organizations.

What are your ideas on this course of guided by Imaginative and prescient 2030 thus far?

Muhammed Zaulifqar: Thanks for having me.

Imaginative and prescient 2030 is a extremely thrilling initiative. I feel that it made the entire world jealous a little bit. All nations would love a authorities that invests as closely in its folks as KSA’s.

That is very true for the world of tech and merchandise. Saudi Arabia is changing into a model of Silicon Valley, and investments are being made in information facilities throughout the nation. In the meantime, extra infrastructure is being laid.

There’s additionally plenty of funding in human expertise and consultants that may assist develop and nurture the subsequent technology of Saudi leaders.

We’ve seen actually constructive developments in these areas in 2024.

It could be just the start. As somebody who has a lot expertise working with each huge firms and startups, what do you assume would be the essential focus of the Saudi IT world going ahead?

From a product perspective, it’s getting fascinating now as a result of we’re in a transition section.

Previous to Imaginative and prescient 2030, many firm purposes have been thought of adequate so long as they’d a product-market match. It was all about launching a product that fulfills a necessity. You didn’t want an excellent product crew and person expertise. The Saudi market wasn’t actually as open to the world at that time as it’s now. There wasn’t a lot competitors.

Now, you must develop high-quality merchandise and person experiences, conduct person discovery and analysis, and clear up actual person issues. The bar is being raised.

Meals supply apps like Starvation Station and Keeta have improved their high quality. We haven’t seen market-leading purposes of this caliber in Saudi Arabia for some time. The identical goes for buy-now-pay-later apps like Tabby or Tamara, which have reached a robust maturity stage.

Along with all of the investments, this progress in KSA is pushed by the extremely aggressive nature of the present Saudi market. We’re attempting to outdo one another, and I consider that this type of competitors may be very wholesome.

Product administration – challenges

Having nice engineers is essential, however you additionally want glorious product administration to construct successfully in the long run.

I do know that there are some actually gifted Saudi product managers, however wouldn’t it be proper to say that there aren’t sufficient of them for everybody? 

Most product managers will inform you this – it takes plenty of time to know product administration.

The educational curve is excessive as a result of it’s essential to purchase many expertise. It is advisable to perceive person discovery, product growth, and know-how. You additionally want to understand funds, numbers, a little bit of gross sales and advertising, and information evaluation.

What’s extra, it’s essential to determine find out how to mix all of those expertise and use them to work with stakeholders who specialise in any of those fields.

The identical was true for me. At first, I had no concept what product administration was or what I used to be doing. It took me 5 years of launching merchandise and failing for varied causes to achieve a greater understanding.

My administration was proud of me all this time, however I wasn’t. I believed that we may have accomplished a lot extra. Over time, I recognized a number of areas the place we may have improved. We weren’t actually data-driven. We may have accomplished extra when it comes to technique, supply practices, and person expertise.

Product administration solely actually turned popularized in KSA round 2023. In fact, there have been product managers previous to that, but it surely wasn’t actually a well known idea or a self-discipline. For the sphere to develop as an entire, it’s going to take plenty of time.

Talking of product administration experience, you wrote in your LinkedIn profile that some managers are inclined to focus loads on theoretical facets of product administration. Are you able to elaborate on that?

Sadly, that is what occurs once you examine one thing pretty new and classy. All these theories and frameworks from globally acknowledged organizations and leaders sound wonderful at first look. You need to strive them out.

However needless to say what you see and skim in books or programs and what you do on the bottom are two various things.

All these theories and ideas sound cool, however you’re beneath enterprise strain. There are targets and objectives, and the corporate has aggressive buyers behind it. It’s difficult.

When you might have product managers who’re overly theoretical and need to spend two or three weeks making discoveries, after which you might have the product proprietor who’s received all these buyers chasing him – it simply doesn’t scale up or align.

This theoretical product administration is inflicting plenty of frustration for companies. It must be way more pragmatic and result-driven. It must work on the pace the group goes.

As a product supervisor, your problem is to seek out methods to adapt to such a fast-paced setting. Your model must be extra streamlined and efficient.

For instance, moderately than taking two weeks to do discovery, you are able to do some stable discovery that provides you 80% of the solutions in a day or two. Then, you are able to do an efficient product necessities doc (PRD), talk effectively, decide, and transfer on to growth.

The identical goes for person discovery – as a substitute of doing a hard and fast variety of interviews and spending obligatory time on discovery, you’ll find fast and nonetheless efficient methods to do it. You’ll be able to even break person discovery into phases.

We’ll get again to fast wins quickly. For now, I wished to ask you about one other problem.

Lots of my Saudi buddies verify this opinion: Saudi staff actually worth face-to-face interplay and should not all the time get pleasure from distant work. Is that this an enormous impediment for Saudi firms to beat to get probably the most out of native expertise?

It’s undoubtedly true for product administration as a result of the extremely stakeholder-led nature of the position means you’ll be interacting with all these departments. You’ll be the primary PoC for necessities, updates, points, discovery, information, and so forth. Try to be there in individual to deal with all that.

Nevertheless it’s additionally in regards to the nature of KSA. Individuals right here actually worth private relationships. It’s a really family-centric tradition.

In lots of organizations, folks wish to ask one another how their households are doing and what they’re as much as. They have a tendency to eat collectively and exit collectively. That actually helps to unlock plenty of doorways when it comes to collaboration.

Whenever you work remotely, particularly as a product supervisor, plenty of that will get misplaced. This strategy would work higher in European cultures. In Saudi tradition, it’s essential to be on-site as a lot as potential.

Reimagining product administration

Please inform me extra about what any product supervisor can do in 2025 to ship software program higher and sooner.

First, how can a product supervisor higher perceive the corporate imaginative and prescient and focus efforts round it?

It’s actually essential for the product supervisor to interact with the management, the division’s leads, and the center administration crew.

It’s a must to be proactive as a product supervisor to align with management. And you could do that in a practical moderately than a theoretical means. That’s the way you drive fast outcomes.

However you don’t want to make use of complicated scoring strategies, such because the RICE framework or OKRs. Preserve it easy, streamlined, and pragmatic.

Simply do an inventory of 20 issues to do so as of precedence. Get all people in a room and have them agree on the priorities. Then, work round these priorities when it comes to your discovery to know their impacts, complexity, strategic alignment, and profit for the person.

Then, current the answer to administration. Clarify its influence and the time it is going to take to ship. Based mostly on that listing, you’ll be able to reprioritize and proceed to rethink the way it influences key enterprise metrics. 

Additionally, to maintain issues streamlined, keep away from doing pet initiatives and issues that you just assume are cool.

An entire totally different facet of product administration I wished to speak about is person expertise and the depth of the way you construct your options.

I’d love for folks to start out considering a bit extra about MVPs, not as Minimal Viable Merchandise however as Minimal Lovable Merchandise. What’s the minimal I have to do to make this explicit function or product straightforward to make use of and fulfilling, a product that I get pleasure from utilizing? It doesn’t have to have all of the functionalities, however no matter it does, it should do very well.

What I don’t need MVPs to be are horrible feature-first experiences. It simply turns into a trigger and a purpose for complaints and churn to occur.

As an alternative, I’d deal with investing extra time in making merchandise and options adoptable. Even when a product is restricted, it ought to do what it’s imagined to do successfully and supply a friction-free expertise. I’d advise in opposition to a heavy-friction MVP because of the maturing nature of the shoppers out there now.

To sum up, simply fixing an issue isn’t sufficient anymore. Give attention to two issues – delivering worth rapidly and offering friction-free UX.

I agree – my expertise additionally tells me that product administration is about searching for product-market match from the beginning.

However for a supervisor to ship worth rapidly, they could want an entire new angle. How will you foster a mindset that contributes to reaching fast wins in product administration? 

Frameworks corresponding to RICE and OKR are nice, but it surely takes vital time for the group to correctly undertake and perceive them. What it’s essential to do is cut back the adoption cycle and have folks aligned and dealing in direction of a singular purpose proper now.

Getting fast outcomes is about having your groups orbit across the prime 10-20 initiatives. You will get the entire crew to deal with this moderately than having a squad of PMs, varied engineers, designers, and QAs work on a product that isn’t a excessive precedence. It may very well be put in upkeep mode, and the useful resource may very well be put some other place.

Within the early section, in a market stuffed with aggressive buyers who need returns and with plenty of immaturity within the product area, it’s essential to be laser-focused on getting short-term outcomes.

Finally, because the group matures and organizes its priorities, it could possibly begin to construction issues extra formally. Then, you’ll be able to have a look at OKRs and all the opposite frameworks. 

To realize these fast wins, product managers could need to work intently with builders and different specialists to know their views. Within the CTO vs Standing Quo collection, we mentioned cross-collaboration loads, particularly between product and tech.

What’s your recommendation for product managers who need to perceive and talk with builders higher? 

There’s a entire spectrum of engineers on the market. Some simply need to put their headphones on and code all day. They’re not all in favour of why you do sure issues. They simply need to work on cool coding issues.

However then, there are engineers who’re on the opposite facet of the spectrum – they’re very within the product. They don’t need to write any code till they perceive why you do this stuff, what’s the issue and what influence their work has on it.

I’d actually suggest that everyone, each product and tech folks, all the time have their digicam on and be engaged.

Builders ought to ask how they are often product engineers, not simply plain engineers. They need to consider how they will empower their group to construct one thing that isn’t simply the technically cleanest resolution however one thing that helps an organization obtain its objectives. For instance, they will consider how they can assist cut back the implementation time from 6 weeks to three or from 3 sprints to 1.

It’s all part of a tradition and mindset the place everybody focuses on fixing enterprise objectives and bettering enterprise metrics moderately than simply constructing technically correct options.

In fact, you’ll be able to’t construct a damaged app both – you need high quality. The purpose is that each time you sort out a technical downside, like API integration, it’s essential to ask your self questions corresponding to: “Why do we have to construct this?” or “Do we have to construct such a competency, or is there a greater means to make use of our time?”.

An organization could select to broaden its crew to seek out the proper folks to work in such an setting. To try this, it could have to stability native expertise with expats and even distant overseas groups. Is {that a} huge problem?

For positive. Whenever you have a look at the unicorn firms right here, their primary downside is product administration. It’s not a straightforward downside to resolve on account of quite a few causes.

First, there’s a lack of understanding out there. It’s a reasonably new area right here. The demand-supply imbalance ends in folks with two or three years of expertise in lead or senior positions. Usually, you’d anticipate 5 to seven years of expertise from a senior PM, seven to 9 from a principal, and a minimum of 10 from a head.

In engineering, once you get a pc science diploma and study quick, you might change into an enormous contributor fairly rapidly. It doesn’t work like that in product administration – on account of its holistic nature and all of the little complexities of it; you want a minimum of 5 years to understand what product administration is.

Nevertheless, whereas there isn’t sufficient native expertise, you continue to want all of the native consultants you will get. You’ll be able to’t replicate the localized understanding of KSA, which in some ways is its personal bubble. It has a extremely distinctive people-centric tradition.

What’s extra, KSA is experiencing fast adjustments now. We simply had the Saudi Founding Day (February 22), and so they introduced a brand new image for the Saudi riyal foreign money. Riyadh can be present process a metamorphosis – there’s plenty of building work and plenty of site visitors. It may be overwhelming, particularly for a foreigner who doesn’t converse the language.

Quite a bit has modified, and a lot transformation has occurred. These dynamics didn’t exist elsewhere. You actually need somebody native who can information you thru all this stuff. That’s actually essential, as you’re coping with Saudi customers.

There are approaches you don’t need to copy. For instance, Careem didn’t do significantly effectively in KSA. They have been tremendous profitable within the UAE. They tried to repeat and paste the idea right here in KSA, but it surely didn’t work out. These are two fully totally different markets and two fully several types of customers – UAE has 90% expats, and KSA is a really proud conventional Saudi nation and nation. You want that localized understanding of customers.

As a result of challenges with the area, you additionally want skilled product individuals who can be sure that merchandise are constructed accurately, discoveries are made correctly, there’s a method, and outcomes are achieved pragmatically, as we’ve talked about.

It’s about balancing native and overseas expertise and making them work collectively. The problems embrace localization, high quality product administration, and dealing in tandem – they aren’t straightforward to resolve.

Reinforcements from the skin

It’s usually repeated that the data of native Saudi finish customers is significant for a product’s success. Due to this fact, you consider that having a minimum of some native expertise on board is important.

What would you say to Saudi leaders who need to enter cooperation with overseas product managers? How can they assist foreigners study extra in regards to the person effectively?

Foreigners actually simply need to embrace the tradition.

For instance, our ministers just lately talked in regards to the 2034 World Cup to be hosted in Saudi Arabia. It is going to be a possibility for folks to see the wonderful Saudi tradition – a family-friendly occasion with out consuming, alcohol, or medication. We wish households to have the ability to benefit from the occasion safely. 

Being on-site is useful, but it surely isn’t all the time sufficient. Plenty of expats dwell in remoted compounds, away from the locals. They dwell in a little bit of a bubble.

As an alternative, they need to immerse themselves as a lot as they will within the native tradition. In Riyadh, you’ve received the trendy areas within the north and the older components of town within the south and east. You’ll be able to see the sort of people that will use your product, discover tendencies, and even choose up a little bit little bit of the Arabic language.

They’ll expertise plenty of kindness. Nevertheless, at instances, they’ll even be a part of occasions they’ve little to no understanding of, however even that’s alright. They need to get themselves out of their consolation zone.

So it’s about staying open-minded and all in favour of experiencing native tradition and its behaviors.

Alternatively, you as soon as wrote that there are various studying alternatives for Saudi product managers to achieve know-how from huge firms and initiatives within the European and US markets.

How can Saudi managers greatest use that have domestically?

I believed there have been common guidelines for product administration. However I came upon that in KSA, you must break them a little bit – they’re simply not going to work out of the field.

Don’t get me flawed. There are product administration expertise corresponding to find out how to talk successfully, find out how to write good PRDs, find out how to construct a method, and find out how to analyze information – all of these core expertise you could study from mature markets within the West are nonetheless very related, however you’ll have to adapt them to the Saudi market.

For instance, in a typical market idea, the place you might have patrons and sellers, I’d usually belief sellers to create high-quality content material. I wouldn’t spend money on or be concerned in content material high quality management.

However in KSA, you really want to take a position to make sure that the content material created by these sellers is of correct high quality. You actually need to double down on content material high quality assist and educate distributors on this discipline.

When you’ve got localized data of the Saudi market, you’ll find distinctive methods of rising your product that no product administration e-book can train you. In the event you may mix that localized data with product administration experience to carry these two worlds collectively, you’ll be a game-changing asset for KSA.

When would you say it’s a good suggestion for Saudi firms to work with distant groups from overseas?

It undoubtedly is sensible for engineering. Many startups need to management their buying prices, and the expertise right here in KSA is sort of costly and never straightforward to supply.

From a product administration perspective, it may work in additional technical roles, corresponding to a platform product supervisor or a funds or integrations PM. In such cases, when an organization struggles to seek out native expertise, extra accessible world PM expertise on a distant foundation may very well be an possibility.

But when the product is closely stakeholder- and user-centric in its nature and requires plenty of interactions with each teams, as a PM, it’s possible you’ll must be on website. I don’t assume that’s going to alter. It’s simply the DNA of the Saudi market. It’s a must to embrace it.

Common recommendation

To sum issues up, may you share some recommendation for firms based mostly in Saudi Arabia who need to guarantee that their product administration helps ship high quality software program most effectively?

Make your priorities clear and simple for the crew, like with the 10-20 prioritization listing. Empower them to make crucial adjustments and maintain them accountable for outcomes.

Guarantee that you’ve the proper mix of expertise – herald good younger Saudis who’re prepared to study. They’ll provide help to perceive the native market. Assist them develop by pairing them with skilled product leaders. However have lifelike expectations. As I mentioned, it takes 5 years for one to develop correct PM expertise.

Spend money on studying what product administration is. Sadly, not many leaders perceive it. They assume it’s all about listening to requests from management and ensuring that engineers construct it. There’s a lot extra to it. It’s a posh area that can provide you a significant aggressive benefit. It’s about understanding customers and the influence of your product on key metrics. It’s a sport of constructing the proper issues on the proper time.

So I’d say these are the three essential issues that come to thoughts on this regard.

Assets

Your LinkedIn profile is a well known supply of data about product administration in Saudi Arabia, particularly in Riyadh. Are there another studying sources that you just’d suggest?

You’ve a neighborhood product Meetup neighborhood, Montajat. They’ve a number of initiatives, together with a just lately launched product coaching program. They’re a great neighborhood to community with, and in some ways, they’re the middle of spreading product administration.

I consider that Muntajat is even translating some books. A couple of books, like Impressed by Marty Kagan, have just lately been translated into Arabic. Extra content material is coming to the Arabic language.

A couple of new leaders are additionally getting into the market. Take note of particular firms which have new leaders coming in from overseas and attempt to community with them.

What’s subsequent? 3 guidelines for IT leaders in Saudi Arabia to observe

What do you assume? Do you think about your self able to construct profitable merchandise in KSA?

For greatest outcomes, ensure to mix the most effective facets of pragmatic product administration and cooperation with native expertise:

• Have clear short-term priorities – as a substitute of specializing in fancy frameworks, make an inventory of 10-20 priorities to deal with, particularly early within the group’s life.
• Emphasise person expertise – at this time, Saudi customers need extra than simply an app that solves an issue. They need a friction-free expertise.
• Stability out the most effective native and overseas expertise – you want localized data to know the intricacies of the Saudi market. Overseas expertise can nonetheless be vastly useful, however it is going to depend on locals to achieve a greater understanding of KSA. In flip, they will contribute their product administration expertise. 

Ensure to observe Muhammed’s LinkedIn for extra knowledgeable recommendation on product administration in Riyadh!