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INFRA.MARKET / DISCOVERY → DELIVERY

The product work came before the title.

From store-manager interviews through specs, launch and feedback cycles at Infra.Market, done end to end as a software engineer.

THE PROBLEM

Store managers had workflow gaps that the existing tooling did not cover.

MY CALL

Start with store-manager interviews and stay with the problem through the spec, the launch and the feedback.

WHAT CHANGED

Post-launch feedback cycles with store managers shaped the roadmap.

Interview → spec → launch → feedback
4 stages
Who I interviewed
Store managers
The full PM loop, as an engineer
Pre-title

Context

Company
Infra.Market, Bengaluru
My role
Software engineer, owning the product end to end
Users
Store managers
Related work
Photon, the operations platform running across 30+ stores
07 / FOLLOW THE WORKInterviewsStore managersSpecificationsProduct decisionsLaunchInto useFeedbackRoadmap inputsLEARN FROM THE PEOPLE USING IT
07 / FOLLOW THE WORKInterviewsStore managersSpecificationsProduct decisionsLaunchInto useFeedbackRoadmap inputsLEARN FROM THE PEOPLE USING IT
The Photon Studio product loop: store-manager interviews, specifications, launch and post-launch feedback.

The problem

Infra.Market runs retail stores, and store managers carry a lot of operational work between customers, staff and inventory.

Photon Studio had to be built around how they actually worked. That meant talking to them before writing anything.

I was a software engineer. The PM title did not exist for me yet, but the product still needed interviews, a spec, a launch and a way to learn from use.

EVIDENCE
  • Interviews with store managers.
  • Workflow gaps I had already seen while working on Photon across 30+ stores.

Constraints & non-goals

Constraints

  • I owned engineering and product at the same time.
  • Store managers had very little time for interviews during store hours.
  • The launch had to fit around live store operations.

Out of scope

  • Changing store processes that were already working.
  • Building for head-office reporting first.

Options I weighed

  • NOT CHOSEN

    Build from the brief handed to engineering

    Quick to start, but it would have baked in head-office assumptions about store work.

  • NOT CHOSEN

    Ship first, then gather feedback

    Feedback after launch is necessary, but too late to catch a wrong core workflow.

  • CHOSEN

    Interview first, spec from findings, launch, then run feedback cycles

    Discovery and delivery stayed with one owner, so nothing got lost in a handoff.

The spec

spec / photon-studio.mdInfra.Market

Users

  • Store managers.

Requirements

  • Specs written from interview findings.
  • Each requirement traces back to something a store manager told me.

Acceptance criteria

  • A store manager can complete the core workflow without head-office training.

Guardrails

  • Launch does not disrupt live store operations.
  • Feedback cycles continue after launch.

What shipped

  1. Interviews

    Sat down with store managers to understand the work.

  2. Specifications

    Wrote the product specs from what I heard.

  3. Launch

    Led the launch into stores.

  4. Feedback cycles

    Ran post-launch feedback cycles that fed the roadmap.

What changed

Post-launch feedback from store managers shaped the Photon Studio roadmap.

  • It was the first time I did the whole PM job, end to end, without the title.

HONEST CAVEATI don’t have an adoption metric for Photon Studio to publish. The kitchen visualiser, Photon and Rise numbers belong to those products and are listed separately.

Reflection

Owning discovery as the engineer removed a handoff. The spec was written by the person who heard the problem and who would build the answer.

If I did it again, I would set a success metric before launch instead of relying on qualitative feedback alone.

Last updated · Company tenure is Infra.Market · Dec 2023–Jul 2025, not a claim about individual project dates.