How To Break Into Product Management — And Grow

Photo by Mario Gogh on Unsplash

Since the role and responsibilities of a product manager are hard to define and differ in each company, getting into this field feels like an ambiguous challenge for newcomers.

In the last year, I interviewed 50+ junior product manager candidates and I observed that most of them actually do not know what they don’t know. There are big gaps in the candidates’ understanding of the product manager role and its responsibilities. Despite their high motivation for being a product manager, the candidates are not sure where to start and which areas to focus.

That’s why I pulled together six topics with relevant resources that I feel are the most important ones for new product manager candidates. Hopefully, these topics and resources will remove the fog and get them on the right track.

1. Learn the “startup” way of working

Author of the Lean Startup, Eric Ries, defines a startup as “a human institution designed to create a new product under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”

The fundamental tasks and activities of an early-stage founder and a product manager intersect to a large extent. They strive to make something people want by 1) launching a product/feature, 2) talking to customers to see if it serves their needs, 3) take their feedback and iterate.

A product manager should learn how successful startups build products, achieve product-market fit, talk to customers, prioritize potential features, and purposely do things that don’t scale.

Here are some resources that will help to learn the startup way of working:

• Read this book to learn how to drive a startup and grow a business with maximum speed: Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
• Read this startup playbook by Sam Altman.
• Learn how to talk to users (user interviews) by watching this lecture: How to Run a User Interview? by Emmett Shear.
• Read this article to learn why repeatedly doing things that don’t scale is the secret sauce of a successful startup: Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham.
• Watch this video to learn the basics of measuring user behavior in a product: Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR! by Dave McClure.

2. Understand why being “agile“ is important

Product managers typically deal with problems with no recipes in an uncertain and ever-changing environment. In this setup, making rigid long term plans for the unknown future and trying to stick to it inevitably fails.

Planning and managing the software development process should fit into this environment: Execution should be fast and easily adaptable to changes. Teams should launch features in small pieces in a continuous manner. So that,

• failures can be noticeable earlier and they become an opportunity to learn
• achievements motivate people early on and show the right path.

Product managers must understand why planning and executing in an agile way makes the difference.

Here are some resources that will help to learn the agile way of software development:

• Read the agile manifesto and its twelve principles.
• Watch this video to learn Spotify’s engineering culture that inspired many product teams worldwide (and helped to beat Apple Music).
• Watch this video to get an idea on agile software development. Remember there are no certain rules of being agile, it is adapted differently in every company (even among teams in the same company).

3. Learn technical literacy

“Should I have a CS degree?”

“Should I know how to code?”

Above are the two of the top questions I get from the people who are interested to jump into product management field.

The answer is no: A product manager does not need to know how to code or does not need to have a CS degree (at least for the 95% of the product management jobs out in the market).

That being said, a product manager should build technical literacy skills to

• Roughly understand technical constraints and complexity of the potential features without needing to consult devs.
• Smooth the communication with the devs by understanding the basic technical concepts. e.g. APIs, Databases, clients, servers, HTTP, technology stack of the product, etc.

Here some resources that will help to learn technical literacy:

• Complete this course to build foundational knowledge on basic technical concepts: Digital Literacy by Team Treehouse (offers 7-day free trial)
• Complete this course to understand the building blocks of any program: Algorithms by Khan Academy (free)
• Stripe is famous for its elegant API documentation. Check out Stripe’s API documentation to get a rough idea on how APIs work. Google the terms that you don’t know.

4. Learn to make data-informed decisions

Product managers do not code the actual product. However, they play an important role in something very tangible for a team: decisions.

Decisions can range from small ones like increasing the height of a text box, to big ones like what are the MVP features of a new product should be.

Throughout my experience, the easiest and most comfortable decisions I made were always based on insights pulled out of data (both qualitative and quantitative). Data helps you on sizing a problem, choosing on different versions of design elements, keeping or killing a new feature, monitoring performance and so much more.

It is critical to involve fewer opinions (OR biases) and involve more facts to make your life easier and your product to thrive.

Here are some resources that help to be data-informed in product management:

• Complete this course to build a fundamental knowledge on statistics: Statistics by SJSU at Udacity (free)
• Complete this course to start learning how to pull data from databases and analyze it on the fly: SQL Fundamentals by Datacamp (free trial available)
• Booking.com is one of the pioneers of A/B testing, globally. Watch this presentation learn how they build the testing culture.
• Read this article to learn how Airbnb approaches experimenting: Experiments at Airbnb
• Get familiar with machine learning: Machine Learning is Fun! by Adam Geitgey

5. Start understanding good design

Product managers and designers work together to deliver a great product experience to users.

Although product managers do not have to design, they should appreciate good design and be able to separate it from a mediocre design so that they can give useful feedback. Product managers should go beyond saying “make the logo bigger.” They should be the gatekeeper when things getting complicated or suffer from “over-design.”

Here are some resources that will help understanding good design:

• Read this book to build an instinct for what makes a product usable and self-evident: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• Check out and get familiar with Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Google’s Material Design. Try to spot these design patterns in your everyday-apps.
• Watch this lesson: Design for Startups by Garry Tan

6. Plug into tech news

Pick a song, a paint, a philosophy… They are all recombinations of other ideas. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the personal computer (Xerox Was Actually First To Invent The PC, They Just Forgot To Do Anything With It) and Sony didn’t invent the first digital camera (Kodak invented the digital camera — then killed it). These companies had just rearranged what already exists by borrowing, reusing and remaking the ideas that come before them. This is the natural pattern of innovation.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.

— Steve Jobs

Product managers should always follow up new products, learn about fast-growing startups and fails, become an early adopter of frontier techs, read and listen on rising trends. Without this, they cannot be creative and follow the pattern of innovation.

Here are some resources to read, listen and watch periodically:

• Check out these every day to follow up the newest products and internet trends: ProductHunt and BetaList
• Follow these daily for tech news: TechCrunch, Hacker News, and Hackernoon.
• Subscribe to This Week In Startups by Jason Calacanis. He periodically hosts entrepreneurs to talk about their stories.
• Follow tech leaders & influencers on Twitter. Here are my suggestions: Paul Graham, Des Traynor, Ben Horowitz, Marty Cagan, Paul Adams, Ian McAllister