I Was Never Just a Process Engineer

Hi, I'm Katlego — a Business Process Engineer turned Product Manager.

A lot of people have been asking me why I wanted to move into product management so badly. So as my first blog post, I thought I'd give people some real insight into my background. Not the LinkedIn version. The actual story.

It started way before my career

When I was in high school, my school introduced IT as a subject for the first time. I was one of the students who dropped Life Science to take it. No regrets.

But it wasn't just about the subject. I was that person who couldn't go anywhere without thinking about how things could work better. I'd sit in a restaurant and think — why don't they have tablets on the tables? I could browse the menu, place my order right there, and track when it's being prepared. The waiter brings it when it's ready, but I'm in the loop the whole time. No waving anyone down, no waiting to be noticed.

One day I was fetching my brother from creche and I noticed we had to sign in and out on a piece of paper every single day. Same thing, every day, pen and paper. And I'm standing there thinking — why can't this be a fingerprint scanner? Tap in, tap out, done. Why are we wasting everyone's time with paper in 2006?

That's just how my brain works. I see a process and I immediately think about the person going through it and how technology could make their experience better.

University taught me what I liked

I went to university wanting to be the person who builds these solutions. Studied Information Systems, did my honours, eventually my Masters. Along the way I realised I really enjoyed the business analysis and solution design side of things — understanding the problem, figuring out what to build, designing how it should work.

Unfortunately the job market didn't hand me a business analyst role straight away. I got an opportunity as a process engineer in banking instead. And honestly? I took it.

Why I actually enjoyed process engineering

Here's the thing most people don't realise about process engineering in banking — it's not like manufacturing. You're not standing on a factory floor timing how long someone walks between stations. Most banking processes are already digital. No physical papers being walked around for sign-off, no filing cabinets. Everything lives in systems.

So when you're improving a banking process, you're really talking about automation, system integration, better user flows. And that's what excited me — the technology side of it. The world is advancing every day and banks have to keep up.

In the early days it was more process documentation and architecture work. Then I got into Lean Six Sigma. Then design thinking. Each step brought me closer to the thing I actually cared about — the people using these systems.

The part that wasn't in my job description

Here's where things started to shift.

Because I'm so passionate about tech, I kept finding myself wanting to be involved in what gets built, why it gets built, and when. That wasn't part of my job spec. My job was to map the process, find the inefficiency, recommend the improvement, and hand it off. But I didn't want to hand it off. I wanted to be there for the whole thing.

I remember being asked why I always rush to automate things. And I always pushed back — no, we don't just automate a crappy process. We standardise it first, test it, and then automate. There's a difference.

I did the business needs understanding. I mapped the current state. I designed the to-be. But that's where my involvement was supposed to end. I'd have to measure the benefits afterwards for continuous improvement purposes, sure. But the building part — the actual making of the thing — that happened without me.

And I hated that.

I kept asking how to be involved end-to-end

From the very beginning of my career as a process engineer, I kept asking: how can I be involved in the full journey? From understanding the problem all the way through to building and shipping the solution?

And for years, people told me it wasn't possible. That's not how the role works. You're the process person, not the product person.

Then one day I heard about a role called Product Manager.

Now, I know there are different types of product managers. But the one that grabbed me was Digital Product Manager. And for me, that was it. A role where you understand the user problem, define what to build, work with engineering to build it, ship it, measure it, and iterate. End to end. That's everything I'd been trying to do my whole career but was told I couldn't.

So I went all in

I started seeking mentorship from product managers. I got into every room where I could learn. Took courses. Got my SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager certification. Started thinking differently about the work I was already doing.

But I also knew the market is competitive. And honestly, I think South Africa is still catching up when it comes to product management as a discipline — though we're getting there. So I decided to build my own portfolio.

The mentorships and courses gave me theory. But theory isn't enough. I had to do the work.

So I built my own app — Snug Tonight — from scratch. User research, strategy, PRD, design, development, go-to-market, measurement framework. The full product lifecycle. At work, I started doing things the product way too — owning roadmaps, prioritising backlogs, driving adoption, measuring outcomes. And that's how I got into the product world.

Where I'm headed

Learning never stops. I'm looking forward to shipping many more features and solving real user problems — it's what I'm most passionate about.

One day I'll be a Chief Product Officer. And when that day comes, I'll look back and appreciate the starting point. The process engineering years weren't a detour — they were the foundation. Understanding how systems work, how people interact with them, where things break down — that's product thinking. I just didn't know what to call it yet.