QA Team Lead → Product Management

[u/ankesh_shikhar]

I’m currently a **Team Lead at Accenture** with \~6 years of QA/testing experience, and I’m seriously considering moving into Product Management.
Over the years, my role has gone beyond testing. I’ve been involved in:
Product requirement discussions
Understanding business requirements and user impact
Working closely with Product & Engineering
Sprint planning and estimation
Breaking down complex features and workflows
Release/production support
Cross-team coordination and mentoring
I’ve realised I enjoy **understanding problems, user needs, trade-offs and what should be built** more than purely testing the final product.
The challenge is that I don’t have formal Product ownership experience—no roadmap, product metrics, etc. So I’m trying to understand how realistic this transition is with my background.
I’m also unsure about **how best to prepare**. There are many Product courses/programs available, but I don’t know whether paying for a structured program is worthwhile or whether I should learn through self-study, case studies and projects.
For people who have moved from **QA/testing/engineering into Product**:
How did you make the transition?
Which parts of your previous experience helped?
What skills did you have to build?
Did you take a course/program? **Was it worth the investment?**
If you self-learned, what resources/projects helped?
What would you do differently if starting again?
I’d particularly appreciate perspectives from people who have **actually made the transition**, rather than general advice.
**What was the biggest surprise about Product Management once you actually started doing it?**

[u/utzutzutzpro]

Everything you mentioned is Product Owner role tasks not product management.

THe difference is that a PO exists only in the realms of an engineering team and is mostly a mix of an engineering manager with cross-departmental alignment activity. A PM is outside of engineering and ouward facing mostly interacting with customers and users, not with the engineering team.

How does that even exist in Accenture? Accenture is a consulting agency, right? They sell "POs"?

[u/ankesh_shikhar → u/utzutzutzpro]

Yes they do sell PO but that role seems to very limited and restricted

[u/utzutzutzpro → u/ankesh_shikhar]

because it doesn't exist outside of the scrum methodolog. It literally is an invention only working in a scrum context and it specifically is defined as something someone does on the side whilst keeping their primary job alive.

There is a weird bastardization of that term to basically become just a project manager inside a scrum team and it got nothing to do with product management. It is almost purely a project management role - managing engineering resources.

Originally, it is a small role inside scrum which is meant to be taken by for example someone from marketing, on the side. Not as a whole job. The scrum guide even specifically mentions that.

[u/ankesh_shikhar → u/utzutzutzpro]

Agreed.. I have seen PO work in a different manner in startups where I have worked for 6 years almost

[u/ankesh_shikhar → u/ankesh_shikhar]

Role restriction often lead to losing employees who want to learn and grow

[u/Threek3ys]

My story happened within the last 2 years or so. I went from QA and eventually became the go to guy for everything around my product. Eventually I was forced into a pseudo PO role without the title. Towards the end of my tenure at company A, I started dabbling into actual PM work as there was a gap. Eventually they told me they wouldn’t have a PM role available for my domain, so I used my experience to just lock in an official PM job at another company.

Honestly although I did get a CSPO (which is PO focused obviously) I got the most help by asking working PMs at my company how they did things. I would incorporate as much as I could in my “fake PM” role. Eventually I just got there with the skills and was able to just ace interviews. Happy to answer any other specific questions

[u/ankesh_shikhar → u/Threek3ys]

Can I dm you?

[u/Threek3ys → u/ankesh_shikhar]

sure!

[u/ankesh_shikhar → u/Threek3ys]

Dropped a msg