I love Product Management
Last week, I was asked by a student how I became a Product Manager and what was the right training to become one.
Tricky question. Because, as pointed out last week by Ellen Chisa in her great history of product management, there's a lack of traditional resources on Product Management. Few great books, even fewer academic or training programs. Not much awareness among students.
This is a shame, because:
- It's the best job in the world (at least for me).
- A lot of students and people starting their careers don't even know this great job exists (I, for one, became a PM by accident)
- A lot of time is spent reinventing the wheel.
Fortunately, people in the profession have stepped up to fill that void and write a cornucopia of great articles. It has helped me fantastically in my career I've been hoarding their best stuff like a squirrel for the last 4 years. So here's my collection, loosely organized. I hope it can benefit other people as much as it's benefitted me.
All the credit goes to the great PMs and product leaders behind these lines. They're part of the reason I love Product Management.
Level 0 - What is Product Management?
- A Product Manager's Job - Josh Elman
- Product Managers: Who are these ‘mini-CEOs’ and what do they do? - Ken Yeung
- What exactly is a Product Manager? - Martin Eriksonn
- What is Product Management? / Slideshare version - Sachin Rekhi
- PM at Microsoft - Steven Sinofsky
- Product Manager You Are... - Mat Balez
- What Product Management is Not - Marty Cagan
- Does the world need Product Managers any more - Multiple authors
- Product Management vs. Product Marketing - Marty Cagan
- Evolution of the Product Manager - Ellen Chisa
- Use your Product Powers for Good - Bruce McCarthy
Level 1 - Is it really for you?
- How to hire a Product Manager - Kenneth Norton
- The DNA of Product Management - Hunter Walk
- The Dark Side of PM - Ellen Chisa
- Do I need to be technical to be a PM - Ellen Chisa
- Ode to a Non Technical Product Manager - Hunter Walk
- Should nice people be Product Managers - Alex Pukinskis
- 3 Skillsets for PM Success - Kenton Kivetsu
Level 2 - Becoming a Product Manager
- How do I become a Product Manager? - Multiple authors
- How I became a PM - Ellen Chisa
- Do Product Managers really need a background in CS - Jackie Bavaro
- Want to be a PM? Do a Project - Ellen Chisa
- So You Want to Manage a Product - Rohini Viba
- The 4 ways to break into Product Management - Jackie Bavaro
- 12 things Product Managers should do in their first 30 Days at a new company - Kenneth Norton
- 4 mistakes new Product Managers make - Matt Schnitt
- Evolution of the Product Manager - Ellen Chisa
- Starting and maintaining a career in Product Management - [Notes]
- Cracking the PM Interview [Book]
- PM Interview Questions - [Notes]
Level 3 - Building great products
- Inspired - How to Create Products Customers Love - Marty Cagan - [Book]
- How to build great products - Slava Akhmechet
- Make things as simple as possible but not simpler - Adam Nash
- 10 essential steps to create products that customer love - Laurence McCahill
- The power of the perfect slice - Alastair Lee
- Ten principles on the journey to building great products - Avid Larizadeh
- Quality is not a tradeoff - Julie Zhuo
- How to build products users love - Kevin Hale
Level 4 - Get out of the building
- The 4 steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank - [Book]
- Listen to customers - Kenneth Norton
- Beginning Customer Development - Kevin Dewalt - [Ebook]
- How do Customer Development and Product Management fit together - Cindy Alvarez
- How to structure and get the most out of customer development interviews - Jason Evanish
- The customer is always right. Except when they aren't - Wade Foster
- Your MVP is about discovery not product - Kevin Dewalt
Level 5 - Requirements!
- Painless functional specifications - Joel Spolsky
- Inspired - How to Create Products Customers Love - Marty Cagan - [Book] - [Second Round]
- Requirements are not - Marty Cagan
- Feed the beast - Marty Cagan
- The end of requirements - Marty Cagan
(I've always found this area a bit poor in resources. Any recommendations?)
Level 6 - Roadmaps, planning and prioritization!
- The seven deadly sins of product planning - Marty Cagan
- Product strategy means saying no - Des Traynor
- Product priorities start with strategic goals - Bruce McCarthy
- You don't need a product roadmap - David Heinemeier Hansson
- The inconvenient truth about product - Marty Cagan
- The opportunity backlog - Marty Cagan
- The dirty dozen roadmap roadblocks - Bruce McCarthy
- The pyramid model & what it means for PM focus - Kenton Kivetsu
- How am I going to move my product forward today - Sachin Rekhi
- Don't publish a product roadmap - Colin Rand
- Software Inventory - Joel Spolsky
- Babe Ruth and feature lists - Kenneth Norton
- What are the best ways to prioritize a list of product features - Ian McAllister
- Before you plan your product roadmap - *Des Traynor
- Rodmaps focus on vision benefits, not features - Bruce McCarthy
- The one cost engineers and Product Managers don't consider - Kris Gale
- Guide to Product Planning: Three Feature Buckets - Adam Nash
- Product hierarchy of needs - Tim Fletcher
- Magical thinking and the zero-sum roadmap - Rich Mironov
- Drop feature-based product roadmaps - Teresa Torres
Level 7 - Working with engineers (a.k.a Bringing the Donuts)
- The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy) - Nicholas C. Zakas
- The ten project management commandments - _ Slava Akhmechet_
- 5 things Product Managers wish they could tell developers - Brandon Satrom
- How to work with PMs - Julie Zhuo
- How to work with engineers - Julie Zhuo
- How to work with software engineers - Kenneth Norton
- The Iceberg Secret, revealed - Joel Spolsky
- Leading cross-functional teams - Kenneth Norton
- Engineers: So your PM sucks? Here’s how to fix it. - Ellen Chisa
- Nerds, get the Product Management you deserve - Jeff Enderwick
- The product manager's lament - Eric Ries
- Joel on Software - Joel Spolsky - [Book]
- Peopleware - Tom DeMarco - [Book]
- Team Geek - Brian Fitzpatrick - [Book]
Level 8 - UX and working with designers
- How to work with designers - Julie Zhuo
(I have more here but need to compile it a bit)
Level 9 - Giving and receiving feedback
- You won't regret positive feedback - Zack Holman
- Thirty percent feedback - Jason Freedman
- How to run a design critique - Scott Berkun
Level 10 - Ship, Measure and Win
- Shipping is a feature - Steven Sinofsky
- Great product leaders win games - Adam Nash
- How to deliver more software projects on time - Mark Suster
- Always be defining success - Jackie Bavaro
- The only metric that matters - Josh Elman
- The blind Product Manager - Paul Adams
- Shipping beats perfection explained - Ben Kamens
- Measure twice, cut once - Rick Klau
- The lost art of the soft launch - Wade Foster
- The Mythical Man-Month - Frederick Brooks - [Book]
Level 11 - Organizing a Product Management team
- Enter the Matrix - Organizing Product Management - Mark Tattersall
- Product organizational structure - Marty Cagan
- Good product team, bad product team - Marty Cagan
- The best Product Management model - Marty Cagan
(I've done a lot of research on this subject but couldn't find many good resources. Any recommendations?)
Level 12 - Managing Up
- Managing Up - Marty Cagan - [Notes]
- Top hacks from a PM behind two of tech's hottest products - Todd Jackson
- Stakeholder Management - Marty Cagan
- Court scribe or Hand of the King - Bruce McCarthy
- Influence without authority - Sachin Rekhi
- Management clichés that work - Steven Sinofsky
- How to be persuasive - Jackie Bavaro
- Bad Managers Talk, Good Managers Write - Walter Chen
Level 13 - Becoming great
- Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager - Ben Horowitz (admit it, you were wondering when this one was gonna come?)
- Be a great product leader - Adam Nash
- Top 10 product leadership lessons - Adam Nash
- What distinguishes the top 1% of Product Managers from the top 10?% - Ian McAllister
- What makes someone a great Product Manager at Google? - Edward Ho
- What innate traits do great internet product leaders share? - Chris Wetherell
- Musings on Product Management - Mike Sukmanowsky
- Hiring a great product leader - Sutha Kamal
- What makes a great Product Manager? - Erik Torenberg
- How a football coach taught me to product manage like a boss - Mike Su
- How to hire a Product Manager - _Kenneth Norton _ - [Second Round]
Level 14 - Moar!
- 87 essential tools for data-driven Product Manager
- The Product Manager's Essential Reading list for 2016
- 50 articles and books that will make you a great product manager
- Top 10 posts on Product Management from the industry's best.
Ellen Chisa also mentions a few more.
Have more? You can send me a note on twitter!