"Lorong Product" Podcast Ep 24 - Software Product Management: What PM Interns Actually Do
by NUS Product Club Admin • 5 December 2025
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Too busy to listen to the full episode? Here's the short version — Yi Teng's experience as a Software PM intern at Savant Degrees, and what she learned about the SDLC, documentation, and making the most of your first product role.
What does a product internship actually look like beyond the buzzwords? For Yi Teng, a Year 4 NUS double degree student in Business Administration and Business Analytics, the answer involved diving headfirst into documentation, testing, and the full software development lifecycle — often as the only intern on the team.
1. Finding out out PM
1. Finding out out PM
Yi Teng's Business Analytics degree required a six-month full-time tech-related internship, but she knew early on that she did not want to go down the pure analyst route. Scrolling through Talent Connect, she came across product management and read the job description.
"I think it suited my strengths also from hall. At the point I had just finished a leadership role in hall that was very much project based. So I think it was quite similar to product."
The fact that the role did not involve heavy coding helped too. She applied, leaned on her hall experience to make her case, and landed the role at Savant Degrees, an IT consulting firm that builds digital solutions for companies.
2. What She Actually Did Day-to-Day
2. What She Actually Did Day-to-Day
Yi Teng's internship covered the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) — from sitting in on client requirement-gathering calls, to documentation, to testing. As the only intern on the team, she also picked up more of her direct manager's responsibilities than she had expected.
Her main outputs were Business Requirements Documents (BRDs) and Functional Specifications Documents (FSDs), and she learned testing tools like Katalon and Postman along the way. She also took on a side project helping to automate regression testing for the team's only QA.
On the difference between the two documents: a BRD covers what the product needs to achieve at a user and workflow level, while an FSD goes deep enough into technical specifications that someone without a developer background should be able to test the entire product from it.
3. Positioning Yourself With No Prior Internship Experience
3. Positioning Yourself With No Prior Internship Experience
Yi Teng went into this role with zero prior internship experience. What she had instead was hall. She framed her leadership experience in terms that translated directly to PM: managing stakeholders, meeting deliverables, balancing competing deadlines.
Her advice for others in the same position is to do the research before the interview. Go through the company's case studies, find a genuine point of connection, and come prepared with specific questions. For Yi Teng, that meant discovering that Savant had built the Aspial app — a product she had actually used as a customer — which gave her something real to bring into the conversation.
"Interviewers like to know that you've done your research."
4. The Realities of the Role
4. The Realities of the Role
The best part of the internship was the people and the autonomy. Her CEO checked in on her career goals, her manager gave her room to shape her own learning, and her overseas colleague Andy answered questions within five minutes and without judgement.
That last point mattered more than it might seem. Working alongside developers whose technical discussions she did not always follow, Yi Teng chose to ask questions rather than pretend she understood.
"Your bosses are not there for you to be afraid of. They are there for you to learn from. You don't have to act like you know everything because at the end of the day, if you're an intern, you're not just there to do work, you're there to learn also."
On the flip side, what the role lacked was creative stimulation. Software PM sits in a middle ground between technical and business work, and for someone with interests in media and marketing, that gap was noticeable. It is part of why she is now looking to pivot into data-driven marketing after graduation.
5. Making the Most of Your Internship
5. Making the Most of Your Internship
Yi Teng's parting advice is to go beyond the job description.
"You're not just there to fill the job description. You're there to learn from the company and the people as well."
That meant taking up her CEO's bi-weekly check-ins, asking questions even when she felt she should already know the answer, and going into the office even on days when working from home was an option. Those in-person conversations, she said, added more to her internship than she had expected.
Watch the Full Episode
Watch the Full Episode
Want to hear more from Yi Teng about her experience as a Software PM intern? Catch the full episode below!
About the Author
About the Author
#7A: NUS Product Club Admin
#7A: NUS Product Club Admin
"Modern slave, magical worker" - or so NUS Product Club Admin himself claims to be. As his name suggests, NUS Product Club Admin assists our Operations and Publicity Teams in handling administrative enquiries from our students regarding our various club activities. In addition, he assists in running our social media channels - including Telegram, Instagram and LinkedIn.
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