TPM Stories — Aditi Tyagi from Sift

Interviewed by Betty Luk

Aditi Tyagi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Houston and a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Machine Learning and Data Science from UC San Diego. She began her career as a New Product Introduction Engineer at Calamp. She is currently working as a Technical Program Manager at a SF based startup called Sift. Outside of her professional endeavors, Aditi enjoys singing, playing the ukulele, and traveling. Currently residing in Bay Area, California, Aditi also considers Texas her second home.

Feel free to connect with Aditi on LinkedIn!

Tell us about your career journey — how has your career transformed and how did you become a TPM?

Since the very beginning, I have enjoyed being a planner, listening to problem statements, and finding and explaining solutions in a way that made sense to the questioner. During my university days, I served as Teaching Assistant for multiple courses and found immense satisfaction in helping students understand various ECE and programming concepts. This passion for problem-solving and communication carried over to my role as a New Product Introduction Engineer at Calamp, a telematics product and services company. In this cross-functional role, I made a significant impact by connecting the customer success, quality and engineering teams.
Leveraging my background in data science, I helped automate and analyze data to create insights for engineering. This exercise when paired with customer-focused execution, led to overall positive customer experience. My time at Calamp also provided me with valuable exposure to product lifecycle management, supply chain efforts during COVID-19, and manufacturing processes while being remote.

Currently, as a TPM at Sift, I continue to apply my skills in planning, problem solving, and proactive cross functional collaboration to drive technical programs to success.

AI is a very hot topic currently — what is it like to be a TPM working on an AI-powered fraud platform?

Working for an AI-powered fraud platform is an extremely rewarding and satisfying experience. In today’s world, AI is ubiquitous, thanks to the vast amounts of data collected across various domains. While the use of AI helps solve a lot of noble problems, it is also being negatively used by fraudsters. In this digital era, it is critical for companies to leverage this technology to secure digital trust amongst users.

At Sift, our mission is to help everyone trust the internet. Hearing fraud prevention success stories from our customers and learning how much revenue our solutions have saved them is incredibly moving. It is a pleasure to work with such a bright engineering and leadership team that is always focused on understanding our customer pain points and continually improving our models.

Having an education background in ML definitely helps add context, however the basics of TPM — identifying the problem statement and proposing clear next steps based on data while keeping customer voice live, still applies. For me personally, staying connected to the mission of the company automatically adds passion and makes day to day work exciting!

Tell us more about how you made the pivot to becoming a TPM. What helped you land a TPM role? Any advice for someone looking to become a TPM?

When starting my journey, I was unsure when and how I would land a TPM role. However, I was certain that I wanted to be in a position that connects teams and solves key problem statements centered around customer satisfaction. While I still have much to learn and a long way to go, a few key learnings that have helped me so far:

Identify Key Positive Mentors: Seek out mentors who truly care about your professional well-being. I am incredibly grateful to those who have guided me and shared their experiences, helping me understand what it means to be a successful TPM or product leader. Staying connected with mentors and continuously learning from industry professionals is an invaluable way to validate next steps in your journey and make friends who root for your success!

Keep Learning: In this digital age, there are numerous resources to learn new skills. For a TPM role specifically, I benefited greatly from the Design Thinking Program at UC Riverside, product management and marketing course from Rady’s school of Business at UCSD, and certifications that helped me understand Google Cloud Platform Fundamentals.

Stay Curious and Proactive: This mindset has helped me dissect problems, identify right owners, and remain detail oriented. As one of my mentors rightfully says, along with being proactive, it is equally important to identify the big picture and ask the right questions to the right stakeholders that would help move the needle for the problem we are trying to solve.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a TPM? How did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge as a TPM for me is to influence without authority. This is not specific to any one program, but is a continuous challenge.

A few ways that I have tried to overcome it are:

• Communication: The key is to clearly list out the problem statement, objectives and benefit of your proposal backed by data. It is critical to keep the cross functional teams aligned on how the proposed solution would help the customer in the end and to constantly ask for feedback and address any concerns that the team has.
• Highlight Impact: By highlighting customer escalations or success, the team and individual contributors feel connected to the purpose of their work and it helps build motivation.
• Being a Facilitator: : I believe this is critical to being a successful TPM, by encouraging cross functional discussions that help align on agreed timelines, resolve conflicts and encourage knowledge sharing sessions, especially between engineering and non-engineering teams.
• Being respectful of team’s time: Having a set agenda before entering any meeting helps having a guided and productive meeting. It is critical to respect stakeholder’s time as the role of a TPM is to improve efficiency.

Where do you think TPMs can add the most value? What ways can TPMs contribute to the business’s success?

I believe TPMs are key for effective and productive functioning of any organization! There are various areas where TPMs help contribute to the business’s success:

Process Improvement: Be it execution excellence tracking or continuous improvement initiatives, TPMs keep a sound check for bottlenecks that affect our customer related end goals.

Company Initiative Alignment: TPMs keep active communication at all levels. There is transparency in delivering status updates, and quick resolutions for blockers as right owners are identified through cross functional collaboration. This keeps executive and individual contributors on the same page.

Customer Focus: As mentioned multiple times earlier, customer is the key to all initiatives! TPMs work closely with the product and engineering teams to define realistic goals and timelines and drive a technical program to completion. TPMs are the customer voice whenever there is any prioritization or risk management need.

Mentorship: I would also like to add that TPM leaders are great role models for various cross functional teams to set high standards for execution excellence, and stay focused on the business impact of any initiative they are working on. By following the footsteps of my own leader, I try to always take a step back and question the business impact of any project I am working on. No matter what your role is, defining your key metrics centered around customer impact helps measure your own success.

One of my mentors recommended reading “Eat That Frog” by Brian Tracy. There was a beautiful concept quoted in the book that I have been trying to implement in my professional and personal life:

“The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”)”.

TPMs — What’s your story? If you are interested in contributing or sharing your story, please reach out!