# 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.

Company: Infra.Market

Contribution: Software engineering · end-to-end ownership

Company tenure: Infra.Market · Dec 2023–Jul 2025. This is not a claim about individual project dates.

Context: Interviews → specs → launch → feedback

## TL;DR

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.

Outcome: 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

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

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

Rejected: Build from the brief handed to engineering Quick to start, but it would have baked in head-office assumptions about store work.

Rejected: 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

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.

I 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.

The takeaway: Stay with the problem from the first interview through to use.

Last updated: 2026-09-13