Balancing Quality and Growth: Insights from Marcial Popoca González

In the ever-evolving landscape of product management, balancing quality and growth remains a critical challenge. I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Marcial Popoca González, a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, to discuss his career path and insights on this topic. Marcial’s experience spans from the automotive industry to a tech giant like Microsoft, providing a unique perspective on maintaining quality while driving growth.

What we cover:

• Career transition and background: Marcial shares his journey from logistics to product management.
• Quality assurance strategies: Marcial discusses the importance of maintaining high quality standards.
• Challenges of rapid growth: Marcial talks about the challenges of balancing rapid product development with quality control.
• Data-driven decision making: Marcial highlights how critical data is in making informed decisions that align with customer needs.

Introduction to Marcial Popoca González

When I first asked Marcial about his background, he was keen to take me through it, "I'm currently a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, specifically for the Admin Center Marketplace. My experience is varied, having worked extensively in the automotive industry before transitioning to Microsoft about a year ago."

Marcial's entry into product management was quite interesting. Initially starting his career in logistics, he quickly realized it wasn’t the right fit. "After six months at Procter & Gamble in logistics, I found a job in product management in the automotive industry. I loved it and have been in product management ever since."

Driving Growth While Ensuring Quality

I was curious about how Marcial balances growth and quality in his products. He said the importance of industry-specific strategies. "In the automotive industry, regulation drives quality due to safety and reliability requirements. There’s also a customer expectation for reliability, quantified through complex indexes."

In the tech industry, Marcial spoke about the role of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) in monitoring product performance. "I always monitor NPS to ensure that any feature we ship is reliable and not an additional pain for users. If there's a drop in NPS, I need to understand why customers are not happy before we can proceed."

Maintaining Quality During Rapid Growth

I am always curious how product managers maintain quality as industry’s grow. Marcial offered his insights on this. 

"Shipping small experiments to a subset of users and gather feedback is key. If the feedback is positive: expand; if not, go back and resolve issues involving the whole team—engineers, designers, data scientists, marketing, etc.” Marcial explained, "it’s important to take small steps towards the overall vision of the project."

Marcial spoke about the importance of customer feedback. "We gather detailed feedback through surveys to understand why users did or didn’t like a feature. Constant contact with customers helps ensure quality."

Strategies for Driving Growth While Maintaining Quality

"Defining a customer-based problem is crucial. Even in technical aspects where I’m not an expert, understanding customer needs helps maintain quality." Marcial said.

"Best practices from tech are being adopted in traditional industries. For example, customer centricity and NPS measurement are becoming more prevalent outside of tech." He said while noting emerging trends in product management that are shaping quality and growth.
"What challenges have you faced in balancing quality and growth?" I asked.

"The main challenge is velocity," Marcial admitted. "Quality issues can slow growth. Sometimes, even a small issue like a misaligned pixel requires going back to the code, which delays the final release."

More Lessons Learned in Balancing Quality and Growth

 "It’s not just about data but the correct insights and wisdom derived from it. Proper problem definition from data helps make better decisions, ensuring quality and aligning with customer needs." Marcial said as a way of highlighting the critical role of data in decision-making.

"Sharing data and seeking input from the team ensures everyone is on the same page. This collaborative approach helps maintain quality while moving quickly." Marcial said.

"Flexibility is key," Marcial said. "In the automotive industry, you can't ship anything with a safety issue. In software, there’s more flexibility as sometimes a feature might not be perfect but still functional and useful for the customer. Defyning the desired balance between functionality and quality is crucial."

Conclusion

Marcial’s insights underscore the delicate balance between quality and growth in product management. By focusing on customer-centric strategies, leveraging data effectively, and fostering open communication within teams, product managers can navigate the challenges of rapid growth without compromising on quality.

For more insights on managing quality and growth in product management, explore our other articles on Global App Testing.

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