The latest issue of Diyalog Magazine, published by the Technology Development Foundation of Turkey (TTGV), included an interview with our Founder Kadir Kuğu. While describing the activities in the TTGV Product Management Committee, our founder also mentions the activities carried out in Turkey within the scope of product management and product culture.
After I joined the Product Management Turkey Committee, I started to follow TTGV more closely. As our relations increased, my perception became more open to TTGV's works and activities.
Sustainability is our common problem in the modern age. Everyone started to create some opinion and attitude on this matter. When talking about pandemic, global warming, economic crises and others, people now feel the need to put a stop to this trend. This approach has also spread to the field of technology. All companies started to think about how they could make their business more sustainable and ecofriendly. There was a good awareness. The Product Management Turkey Platform, which made me meet with TTGV, also plays a critical role here.
We are experiencing such a misfortune in Turkey: very good works are being done in our country, very bright ideas are emerging, but the same success cannot be achieved in terms of their sustainability. Although we do very well in generating ideas, finding solutions or engineering, we find it difficult to produce products that the whole world admires. If there is a reason for this, it is that we do not have a product management culture. As a computer engineer, I have seen that there are problems in the sustainability of the work done in all my professional work experience. This is a serious burden for our country. It is unacceptable for us to use our power loutishly. For this reason, we established PIAPEX, Turkey's first and only company providing product management services, in 2020. While establishing PIAPEX, our biggest motivation was to help products, especially technology products, come out of Turkey that are more known, used and loved in the world. When PIAPEX was founded, our paths crossed with TTGV, which had a similar concern. Collaboration with PDMA was an important starting point. Afterwards, the Product Management Turkey Platform was established and it was possible for people interested in product management in Turkey to come together within the scope of the committee. While sharing the developments with each other at the monthly meetings of the committee, we also share our product management experiences with our presentations as committee members. It was a special pleasure for me to make a presentation at the first committee meeting held in this context.
Sustainability and resource using are among the biggest problems faced by our businesses operating in the field of technology today. We should use our limited human resources and time to produce sustainable and value added products instead of repetitive works. Here is product management; It is a culture that we need to create in terms of efficient resource use and sustainability that we need.
"Product Management Turkey's ultimate aim is contributing and leading to the creation of a product management culture."
As a product management professional, I can say that in order to get more efficiency from the methods and tools, as in the same products, they should adapt to the users who use it. Although product management has methods that have been used in the world for many years and even it has become a culture in some countries, it needs to be adapted to our culture in order to be more successful in Turkey.
"In the Product Management Turkey Committee, we, product management professionals, work to create our own product management culture by blending the methods used in the world with our own experiencse and to make the product management culture one of the cornerstones of the organizations. We know that sustainability is only possible by developing a product and managing it correctly."
Product management is not a department taught in universities. It can be adapted to real life by gaining experience in the sector. This experience does not always occur very quickly in each corporates. TTGV brings together different experiences and perspectives within the scope of the Product Management Turkey Platform and guides the companies in this committee on how they can do product management and how they should adapt it to our culture. This is a substantial sharing of experience. You can't obtain this at any meeting, but it can happen with a committee. I determine TTGV's efforts in this regard very valuable and I believe it should be supported.