From GIS Maps to Product Roadmaps
From GIS Maps to Product Roadmaps
I didn't start in product. I started with maps, geocoding outlets, configuring route-planning rules, building Geo-BI portals and optimizing sales territories one business rule at a time. For years my world was spatial data and the logic that made it useful. When I moved into product management, I expected to leave that behind. Instead it turned out to be the foundation everything else stands on.
A geospatial engineer learns to respect the real world
GIS work forces you to model reality as it actually is, not as you wish it were. Roads have one-way restrictions, territories overlap, an address geocodes to the wrong rooftop. You can't hand-wave any of it, the optimization is only as good as your honesty about the constraints.
That discipline carried straight into product. When I write a requirement now, I think the way I used to think about a route: what are the real constraints, the edge cases, the data that won't behave? A roadmap, like a map, is worthless if it pretends the terrain is flatter than it is.
The technical years make me a better translator
Before product, I ran technical support, automated processes with PL/SQL, supported API integrations, and did pre-sales demos. I've been the person on the other end of a vague requirement trying to make it work. That makes me allergic to specs that sound clean but quietly push all the hard parts onto engineering.
Because I've done the implementation, I can challenge an estimate without bluffing and ground a customer commitment in what's actually buildable. I'm not the smartest engineer in the room anymore, but I can keep the conversation between product, engineering, and customers honest, which is most of the job.
Customers were always the constant
Even in my most technical roles, the through-line was customers, RFP responses, demonstrations, training, implementations, case studies. I was always translating something technical into something a customer could use and trust. Product management just made that the explicit goal instead of a side effect.
That's why "customer-first" isn't a slogan for me. I spent a decade watching what happens when a technically impressive solution doesn't fit how people actually work: it goes unused. The fix was never more cleverness. It was listening harder.
The path was an accumulation, not a pivot
GIS taught me to respect constraints. Solution architecture taught me to see the whole system. Technical support taught me where things break in real use. Product is all of those at once, pointed at a roadmap instead of a single deliverable.
I don't think of the move into product as leaving engineering behind. I think of it as finally getting to use every lens at the same time, and in last-mile logistics, where geography, data, and human behavior all collide, that turns out to be exactly the toolkit the problem demands.
Piramanayagam skipped presentations and built real AI products.
Piramanayagam T D was part of the April 2026 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 18 other talented participants.