I'm often asked what's the best way for a new product manager to learn the fundamentals of the role or for an experienced product manager to continue to master their craft. Most folks are looking for a pointer to a book or a class they can take on product management, but I always reply with a collection of blog posts from practitioners sharing their best practices. I still believe these remain the very best resources on the topic. So I wanted to share the collection of posts I've curated in Notejoy over the years from incredible practitioners, writers, and thought leaders across the industry both in and outside of product roles.
I've organized this collection into several sections, starting with product management 101. I then break down the resources into the way I think about what a product manager does, which is drive the vision, strategy, design, and execution of their product. Each section covers the best practices for each of these four dimensions of product management. I then explore growth, which is essential to make any product successful. I go on to include a section on product leadership, which is important for all product managers, but especially for senior folks looking to advance in their career. And finally, I include a set of resources for managing a career in product management. In order to provide a comprehensive resource, I've included a few of my best posts at the bottom of each section.
The best way to take advantage of this collection is to dedicate 10-20 minutes each day to read through a post or two and work your way through the whole collection. Once you have you'll undoubtedly have a deep understanding of the role and what it takes to be a great product manager.
Overview
The following section includes posts that cover the fundamentals of what product management is, what the role entails, and gives you a high-level understanding of the skills you need to succeed as a product manager.
Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager - Ben Horowitz
Let’s talk about Product Management - Josh Elman
How to Hire a Product Manager - Ken Norton
Be a Great Product Leader - Adam Nash
PM at Microsoft - Steven Sinofsky
What Distinguishes the Top 1% Product Managers from the top 10%? - Ian McAllister
Good Product Managers, Great Product Managers - Shreyas Doshi
Video: The Art of Product Management - Sachin Rekhi
The Top 10 Deliverables of Product Managers - Sachin Rekhi
Vision
One of the key responsibilities of a product manager is to define and evangelize the vision for their product. A compelling vision articulates how the world will be a better place if you succeed. I've found the best way for a product manager to learn to articulate a vision is to immerse themselves in a collection of compelling product visions as inspiration for their own. Below is a collection of my favorite vision narratives from a variety of successful technology companies over the past two decades.
Amazon.com - Shareholder Letter, 1997 - Jeff Bezos
Google - The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998 - Larry Page & Sergey Brin
PayPal - Speech to Employees, 1999 - Peter Thiel
Tesla - The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan, 2006 - Elon Musk
Apple - iPhone Introduction, 2007 [Video] - Steve Jobs
Bitcoin - A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, 2008 - Satoshi Nakamoto
Slack - We Don't Sell Saddles Here, 2013 - Stewart Butterfield
LinkedIn - The Economic Graph, 2015 [Video] - Jeff Weiner
Lyft - The Third Transportation Revolution, 2016 - John Zimmer
Blue Origin - Going to Space to Benefit Earth, 2019 [Video] - Jeff Bezos
Strategy
Another incredibly important aspect for product managers to master is defining and iterating on your product's strategy. A compelling strategy details exactly how you'll dominate your market and is constantly refined until you find product/market fit. This collection of posts cover many dimensions of putting together a compelling strategy for your product.
The only thing that matters - Marc Andreessen
How to tell if you have product/market fit - Merci Victoria Grace
How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit - Rahul Vohra
All Revenue is Not Created Equal: The Keys to the 10X Revenue Club - Bill Gurley
Distribution - Ben Horowitz
The Amazon Tax - Ben Thompson
Product > Strategy > Business Models - Fred Wilson
Not all good products make good businesses - Des Traynor
Come for the tool, stay for the network - Chris Dixon
Taking the wrong lesson from Uber - Sarah Tavel
What is Good Product Strategy? - Melissa Perri
Niche to Win, Baby - Dave McClure
Why it's nice to compete against a large, profitable company - Jason Cohen
Distribution vs Innovation - Alex Rampell
Platforms vs Verticals and the Next Great Unbundling - Jeff Jordan
How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business - Lenny Rachitsky
A Lean Alternative to a Business Plan: Documenting Your Product/Market Fit Hypotheses - Sachin Rekhi
A Primer on Business Strategy From Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers - Sachin Rekhi
Design
Design is the third critical dimension of product management. A compelling product design delivers a useful, usable, and delightful experience to your customers. A product manager complements the work of the designers they work closely with by facilitating customer research, generating and prioritizing a roadmap, gathering and spec'ing functional requirements, and everything in between. This collection of essays sheds light on each of these aspects of the product manager's role in designing great products.
Themes: A Small Change to Product Roadmaps with Large Effects - Jared M. Spool
Babe Ruth and Feature Lists - Ken Norton
Using The Kano Model To Prioritize Product Development - Martin Eriksson
Position, Position, Position! - Ryan Singer
On Writing Product Specs - Gaurav Oberoi
Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done - Clay Christensen
Working Backwards - Werner Vogels
If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good - Paul Buchheit
Building Products - Julie Zhuo
Crafting The First Mile Of Product - Scott Belsky
Bad Managers Talk, Good Managers Write - Walter Chen
UX Crash Course: 31 Fundamentals - Joel Marsh
The Hierarchy of Engagement - Sarah Tavel
How Technology Hijacks People's Minds - from a Magician and Google's Design Ethicist - Tristan Harris
10 Things I've Learned About Customer Development - Cindy Alvarez
Product Designers: Artists of the Intangible - Chrys Bader
1 hour of research saves 10 hours of development time - Joshua Porter
Product Reviews - Avichal Garg
How to Prioritize a Product Roadmap - Sachin Rekhi
The Hierarchy of User Friction - Sachin Rekhi
Video: Developing a Continuous Feedback Loop - Sachin Rekhi
Execution
The final but most important dimension of product management is execution. Relentless execution ultimately determines whether you'll make your vision a reality. This involves everything from core project management responsibilities, to leveraging analytics for making data-driven decisions, to leading the overall R&D team, and so much more. This collection of essays provides an overview of each of these execution activities.
16 Startup Metrics - Jeff Jordan
Metrics Versus Experience - Julie Zhuo
The only metric that matters - Josh Elman
Everything a product manager needs to know about analytics - Simon Cast
Speed as a Habit - Dave Girouard
Putting on the shipping goggles - Jason Fried
A Minimum Viable Product Is Not a Product, It's a Process - Jim Brikman
Truly Great Products are Built by People Who Say Yes - Jonathan Sherman-Presser
Peacetime PM / Wartime PM - Noah Weiss
How to Work With Engineers - Julie Zhuo
This is the product Death Cycle. Why it happens, and how to break out of it - Andrew Chen
Great Products Don’t Happen By Accident - Jon Lax
The Right Way to Ship Software - Jocelyn Goldfein
The Only Silver Bullet - Christina Wodtke
The Three Skills of a Great PM - Bubba Murarka
Development Cadence - Megan Quinn
Modern Project Management for Product Managers - Sachin Rekhi
The Art of Decision Making as a Product Manager - Sachin Rekhi
A Leader's Guide to Metrics Reviews - Sachin Rekhi
Growth
We can't simply build a product and hope users will come. Instead, we need to take a systematic approach to attracting the right users to our product and continually optimize our experiences to deliver value to those users faster. These essays explore exactly how to go about building your product's growth engine.
What's next in growth? - Andrew Chen
Product Channel Fit Will Make or Break Your Growth Strategy - Brian Balfour
What Are Growth Teams For, and What Do They Work On? - Casey Winters
The Growth Pyramid Revisited - Sean Ellis
Indispensable Growth Frameworks from My Years at Facebook, Twitter and Wealthfront - Andy Johns
Video: How we put Facebook on the Path to 1 Billion Users - Chamath Palihapitiya
Leadership
Product management is ultimately a leadership role amongst the product development team and developing your leadership skills is tantamount to success in the role. These essays touch upon some of the unique aspects of product leadership.
Don't create a sense of urgency, foster a sense of purpose - Kimber Lockhart
What Product VPs at High-Growth Startups Have in Common - Mike Belsito
The Job of Leadership - Ev Williams
The VP of Product vs the Product Manager - Ellen Chisa
Why Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox - Ben Horowitz
The Importance of Benevolent Dictators - Mark Suster
The Three Responsibilities of Product Leadership - Jens-Fabian Goetzmann
The Most Underrated Product Management Skill: Influence Without Authority - Sachin Rekhi
The Art of Being Compelling as a Product Manager - Sachin Rekhi
How to be a Great Product Leader - Sachin Rekhi
A Career in Product Management
Starting and then navigating a career in product management still remains fairly amorphous for many. These essays dive into the details of getting your first product management role and ultimately navigating a career path.
Jackie’s PM Interview Tips - Jackie Bavaro
Getting to "technical enough" as a product manager - Lulu Cheng
Find, Vet and Close the Best Product Managers - Todd Jackson
Founder/market fit - Chris Dixon
4 Types of Product Managers: Builders, Tuners, Innovators, Enablers - Sachin Rekhi
Product Management Career Ladders at 8 Top Technology Firms - Sachin Rekhi
Finding Product Culture Fit - Sachin Rekhi
Last updated: January 4, 2022
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Thanks for the share, very interesting links
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