IIMB’s Centre for Software and IT Management co-hosts two-day summit on product management renaissance 

The Centre for Software and IT Management (CSITM) at IIM Bangalore and the International Association for Software Product Management (ISPMA), supported by Infosys Finacle, focused the spotlight on the role and skillsets of Product Managers in COVID times. 

The two-day collaborative virtual conference had over 250 individuals, from academia and industry and from across the world, share their product management experiences. New and seasoned digital product management stars spoke on ways to drive innovation in the global marketplace.

Co-Chairs of the summit Dr. Shankar Venkatagiri, faculty in the Information Systems at IIM Bangalore, and Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Chairman, ISPMA, Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Director, IIMB, and Prof. Rajendra K. Bandi, Chairperson of CISTM, addressed the gathering on March 19th. The summit consisted of three tracks – Academic/ Research, Industry, and Workshops.

The Research track, newly introduced in this edition of the summit, saw submissions from all over the world, both from academic institutions and industry. This track also included a ‘Student Showcase’. 
 
The Program Committee for the Academic Track was headed by Prof. Shankhadeep Banerjee, faculty in the Information Systems area at IIM Bangalore, and comprised Prof. Priya Seetharaman, IIM Calcutta, Prof. Ashish K. Jha, Trinity Business School, University of Dublin, Prof. Ashutosh Jha, SP Jain Institute, Dimitri Petrik, University of Stuttgart, and Prof. Samadrita Bhattacharyya, faculty at IIM Udaipur. The winners of the best paper presentations were:
•    Best Project: Student Showcase: Analysis of Photoshop for iPad using ISPMA Frameworks: Varun Shankar, Sujoy Jain, Puja Rani and Shubham Singh.
•    Best Industry Research Paper: AI-based approach to enforce budget restrictions on Azure RG’s for large enterprises by Harihara Vinayakaram Natarajan and Kunal Sunil Kasodekar.
•    Best Case Study/ Case Research Paper: Systems modeling approach to simulate post-COVID-19 student intention to use online learning platforms: Ruchika Vatsa and Purnima Bhatnagar.
•    Best Review Paper: A review of literature on trust in online platforms and future research directions: Sowmya Kini and Rajendra K. Bandi
•    Best Research Paper (Winner): Smart Innovation – How will Artificial Intelligence influence the innovation management of (software) products? Rainer Nägele, Peter Ohlhausen, Anja Braun, et al.
•    Best Research Paper (Runner-up): A hybrid project management methodology for managed services providers: Sophie Ameloot and Anuragini Shirish.
 
Excellence Awards
 
As in the past summits, the SPM Excellence Awards were announced after rigorous evaluation, interviews and presentations by the finalists. The jury comprised Haragopal Mangipudi, adjunct faculty at IIMB and founder of Gunaka Consulting, Dr. Garm Lucassen, Lead Product Manager at Secfi, Amsterdam, Prof. Greg Coticchia, President of Sopheon, USA, and Sangeet Paul Choudary, Founder of Platformation Labs (Singapore). The winners are: 
•    Tango 340B LLC from Tango
•    Quickbook Online advanced from Intuit
•    Lead Assist from Exotel
•    Quickbook Desktop from Intuit

Workshops & Industry track

Workshops were conducted by Vinay Dabholkar, adjunct faculty at IIMB, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Chairman, ISPMA, and Haragopal Mangipudi.

The participants were inspired by the keynote speeches of Krishnaswamy Subbarao, VP, Infosys Finacle, C Todd Lombardo, VP, MachineMetrics, and Dr. Parag Havaldar of Blizzard Entertainment. Panel discussions covered managing product efforts during COVID-19 and productising AI. There were tremendous learnings from companies like Google, Bosch, ABB, Oracle, Siemens, Citrix, Honeywell and others in the Industry track. The Program Committee for the Industry track comprised Scott Miller (Chair), Sanjai K, Franco Gatti, Prof. Shankar Venkatagiri and Hans-Bernd Kittlaus.

“The summit has re-emphasised the importance of the job of a software product manager as software is now a main value driver across all industries,” said Hans-Bernd Kittlaus.

Observing that the Indian software industry had moved past the image of being predominantly a provider of software services to venturing into creation, Prof. Shankar Venkatagiri argued that with maturity witnessed in developing AI-driven products, India was well poised to get global recognition of being a powerhouse of software products.

“The Digital Product Manager has truly allowed global businesses to survive and thrive through the very challenging environment this past year, and India’s Product Management community will continue to lead the charge in growing the global digital economy in the years to come,” he added.