My Product Manager Internship at Microsoft Power BI
I was a Product Manager intern on Microsoft’s Power BI team within Azure Data during Summer 2024. This was my 2nd internship at Microsoft, as I previously interned for 8 months as a business program manager intern in business and compliance.
What is the role of a Product Manager?
If you are interested in hearing about other internship experiences, Michelle Xu wrote a great article about her PM internship in which she also states:
As a disclaimer, my PM experience may vary from others. The PM role differs from company to company (a Microsoft “Program Manager” is like a combination of a “Technical Program Manager” and a “Product Manager”) and from team to team (in my team, I was able to drive product direction like a Product Manager and interact with engineers like a Technical Program Manager, but other teams might lean more into one or the other).
While I cannot go into depth about the specific feature that I worked on as it is still in the process of being released, (I can make updates after it is made public to this post) I can give a general overview of the experience and the product suite.
What Does a Product Manager Intern Do?
As a PM intern, you typically might expect to:
Work on real product features or improvements that will ship to customers by collaborating closely with the development team and gathering requirements from stakeholders
Conduct extensive user research and gather detailed requirements through interviews, surveys, and data analysis to ensure the product meets user needs
Collaborate with engineers, designers, and other stakeholders to define technical specifications and ensure alignment on product vision and goals
Write comprehensive product specifications and documentation that clearly communicate requirements and implementation details
Present proposals and progress updates to leadership, effectively communicating project status and key decisions
Learn about the product development lifecycle including planning, design, implementation, and deployment phases
Participate actively in team meetings and planning sessions, contributing ideas and helping shape product strategy
What is Power BI?
Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Your data might be an Excel spreadsheet, or a collection of cloud-based and on-premises hybrid data warehouses. Power BI lets you easily connect to your data sources, visualize and discover what’s important, and share that with anyone or everyone you want.
The parts of Power BI
Power BI consists of several elements that all work together, starting with these three basics:
A Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop
An online software as a service (SaaS) service called the Power BI service
Power BI Mobile apps for Windows, iOS, and Android devices
These three elements — Power BI Desktop, the service, and the mobile apps — are designed to let you create, share, and consume business insights in the way that serves you and your role most effectively.
Beyond those three, Power BI also features two other elements:
Power BI Report Builder, for creating paginated reports to share in the Power BI service. Read more about paginated reports later in this article.
Power BI Report Server, an on-premises report server where you can publish your Power BI reports, after creating them in Power BI Desktop. Read more about Power BI Report Server later in this article.
From the MS Learn Documentation on Power BI
I interned specifically on the service side during my internship.
I agree with what Michelle stated in her blog:
A PM’s job is to make decisions and execute them.
A lot of the decision-making and execution involves working closely with your engineers, designers, researchers, and customers.
I think she summarized the experience very well and I don’t have much to add in addition to that without going into specifics about the feature, so I will jump into 3 quick tips if you are going to be interning in an upcoming term!
Tips for Future Interns
Document things — it will not only benefit yourself to onboard if you return, but also for future people on your team! Creating comprehensive documentation helps maintain continuity and makes knowledge transfer smoother
Stakeholder Communication is important! Learn how to best work with your stakeholders and maintain clear, effective communication channels throughout your internship
Build Relationships — within and across your team, and disciplines. These connections will enrich your experience and create opportunities for collaboration and learning
Thanks for reading, and as always, I hope you’re taking care!