The second edition of the India Software Product Management Summit 2020 was co-hosted by the Centre for Software and IT Management at IIM Bangalore and the Intenational Software Product Management Organisation on January 17 and 18 at IIM Bangalore.
The summit featured a wide range of Software Product Management (SPM) themes through keynote addresses, workshops and panel sessions by industry leaders, professors, venture partners, product and talent heads. Research paper presentations, mentor interactions, interviews and practitioner conversations were some of the additions this year.
The SPM Excellence Awards were announced after evaluation, interviews and final presentations by the finalists. The jury comprised Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Chairman, ISPMA; Prof Rishikesha T Krishnan, IIM Bangalore; Prof Rahul De’, IIM Bangalore; and Prof Guenther Ruhe, University of Calgary.
The winners were ADM from Citrix, Finacle MobileTeller from EdgeVerve, S/4HC RASD from SAP, and Quickbooks from Intuit.
The ISPMA extended an invitation to the winners to present their success stories at the global SPM Summit at Frankfurt, Germany in March 2020.
The summit began on January 17, with the lamp lighting by Prof S Sadagopan, Director, IIIT, Prof Aboy K Ojha, Dean, Academic Programmes, Prof Rajendra K Bandi, Chairperson of CISTM, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Chairman of ISPMA, and Prof Haragopal Mangipudi, Adjunct Professor of IIM-B and Member of the Board of ISPMA .
The inaugural keynote by Prof Sadagopan set the tone and broader canvas for India’s software product aspirations, and the Business Leadership keynote, in the afternoon, by Sindhu Gangadharan, MD of SAP Labs offered insights on the next wave of business models for software product leaders.
The business leadership panel, moderated by Prof Sadagopan, focussed on India as the Software Product nation in making. The keynote address, by Prof Payal Arora of Earsmus University, Rotterdam, underscored the significance of consumer experience in designing software products/platorms for the Next Billion users.
The Practitioners’ Panel on Innovation and Product Management, moderated by Prof Rishikesha Krishnan, focussed on the biggest challenges faced in driving innovation.
It was encouraging to learn from the paper presentations that efforts are being invested into research, both in the industry and academic worlds.
Prof Greg Coticchia, of Carnegie Mellon University, gave valuable insights on how prod mangers learn.
The panel on start-up and scale-up focus was moderated by SomShubro, Partner, Bharat Innovation discussed product management aspects for tech start-ups growing exponentially. The HR Leadership panel, moderated by Prof Gopal Mahapatra of IIM Bangalore, focussed on scaling the Product talent pool and the need for deepening and widening the software product management competencies and the means to achieve them.
With the several paper presentations by students, researchers and practitioners and four workshops conducted by Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Prof Greg Coticchia from Carnegie Mellon University and Prof. Haragopal Mangipudi, the two-day summit provided a rich spread of activities with great learnings focussed on taking the Indian product management expertise to the global level and lead the world in this capability.