# pmlens

> pmlens (www.pmlens.si) is a product management resource hub built by Shailesh Soni. It covers PRD and spec templates, roadmapping and prioritization frameworks, user research and interview guides, metrics and OKR playbooks, PM interview prep, AI agents for product managers, and Forward Deployed Product Manager (FDPM) training. pmlens is launching soon; people can join the waitlist on the home page.

## About the founder

Shailesh Soni is a product management leader with 20+ years of experience building AI security, cybersecurity, enterprise SaaS, IoT/wireless and mobile products. He works in a Forward Deployed PM style: embedded with customers, from field discovery to shipped product. He is currently Director, Product Management at Qualys, and has held product roles at Itron, Incedo (A10 Networks), STL, Cisco, Nimbuzz and Astute Systems. He has been a guest speaker at the Institute of Product Leadership and a startup mentor in the Cisco LaunchPad 2018 cohort. Education: Accelerated General Management Program at IIM Ahmedabad; MSc IT (PTU); Bachelor's in E-Commerce (GGSIPU). Certifications: CSM (Scrum Alliance), AWS Solutions Architect – Associate, Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, Google Analytics.

## Key pages

- [Home — pmlens](https://www.pmlens.si/): what pmlens offers, FAQ, and the waitlist.
- [About Shailesh Soni](https://www.pmlens.si/about.html): experience, products worked on, education, community work and contact.
- [Blog](https://www.pmlens.si/blog/): essays on product management, startups, leadership, AI and security.
- [1:1 mentoring on Topmate](https://topmate.io/pmlens): book a product management mentoring session.
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonishailesh/)

## Blog posts

- [Validate before you build: 20 conversations beat 20,000 lines of code](https://www.pmlens.si/blog/validate-before-you-build.html): Most startups don't die from bad engineering. They die from building something nobody needed badly enough to pay for.
- [Customer obsession is a practice, not a slogan](https://www.pmlens.si/blog/customer-obsession-is-a-practice.html): Every company says it is customer-obsessed. The ones that mean it have rituals that make it hard to forget the customer.
- [From problem to product: turning messy customer pain into a crisp solution](https://www.pmlens.si/blog/from-problem-to-product.html): The hardest part of product management isn't the roadmap. It's converting a vague, emotional complaint into a problem a team can solve.
- [Leading product managers: hire for judgement, coach for clarity](https://www.pmlens.si/blog/leading-product-managers.html): What I've learned leading PM teams: the job isn't to have the answers, it's to raise the quality of every decision the team makes.
- [Shipping AI features customers actually trust](https://www.pmlens.si/blog/shipping-ai-customers-trust.html): Demos are easy. Trust is hard. Grounding, evaluation and honest UX are what turn an impressive AI demo into a product people rely on.
- [Securing AI in the enterprise: what CISOs ask first](https://www.pmlens.si/blog/securing-ai-in-the-enterprise.html): AI adoption is outpacing AI governance. Here are the questions security leaders are asking, and what good answers look like.
- [On-prem to SaaS: lessons from leading platform migrations](https://www.pmlens.si/blog/on-prem-to-saas-lessons.html): Moving a product to the cloud is not a hosting change. It's a business model, operations and customer-relationship change all at once.

## Contact

- Email: shailesh@pmlens.si