Hello World
Hi,
My name is Ilya (ɪlʲˈja),
I am a skilled Product Manager and Agile Product Owner with extensive experience in B2B Enterprise products. I am passionate about building Platforms that allow other people to develop and deliver their products.
I focus on helping teams integrate and adapt their Product APIs to customer needs as part of the Digital Experience transformation, building Insurance SaaS. My target areas are API Discovery with Dev portals, API Design with Low and No-code tooling, and the Platform's Infrastructure.
My previous 5+ years in Business Analysis, prior Support Engineer experience, and Bachelor's degrees in Linguistics (Interpretation & Literary Translation) and Economics (Logistics & Supply Chain Management) give me the opportunity to communicate with tech and business stakeholders to find common ground. Product Management and Business Analysis are about translating customer needs into requirements and then addressing them with a product or its feature. So, I am still translating and interpreting what I have been doing at the university, but a bit on another level.
I really care about mentoring and building empowered product teams. My favorite quote is from "Creativity, Inc" by Ed Catmull: "If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better." I don't just believe that - I saw it multiple times. The team should have a trusted environment, the right tools, and shared knowledge. I have done that twice, so now I think I do know the recipe.
My writing is disproportionally spread among LinkedIn, Medium, and my blog. I write about topics in which I feel I have some expertise and at least a few people could find it useful. Usually, it is about APIs, Business Analysis, and some Product Manager career insights
I am a frequent speaker in the magnificent BA Warszawa community to which I am proud to belong. I would love to extend my speaking to conferences and other events, but time is very limited.
Here are a few additional facts about me:
- I have Bachelor's degrees in Linguistics (interpretation & literary translation - English, and French) and Economics (logistics).
- I started my IT career as an L1 Support Engineer back in 2014
- Then I switched to a Business Analyst role and worked for five years in outsourcing and product companies on various projects.
- Most of my projects and products have been B2B Enterprise related.
- I am usually involved in technically advanced endeavors. That is why I have knowledge of Python, SQL, RESTful APIs, etc. My current goal is to learn Go.
My Social Media
Contact Me
I am the most active on LinkedIn so you can connect and write to me there. Also, you can send me an old-fashioned email to ilya.zakharau@gmail.com.