The Product Book: How to Become a Great Product Manager
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Dec 6, 2022 06:26 AM
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The Product Book: How to Become a Great Product Manager
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Last updated December 26, 2023
Summary
The Product Book: How to Become a Great Product Manager offers helpful advice and guidance for product managers in the tech industry. Key learnings from the book include understanding the customer development process, key elements of product management, and best practices for launching and marketing products.
As a UX designer, this book gives you valuable insight into the product creation process, and how your design choices influence product success. It outlines how to create products that truly serve customer needs and how to ensure you are building the right thing. By learning the best practices outlined in this book you can use your design skills to build more successful products.
If you enjoyed The Product Book and are looking to learn more about product management and UX Design, then some great books to check out are Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience by Jeff Gothelf, Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug, and Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown.
✏️ Highlights
Put simply, a product manager (PM) represents the customer. No one buys a product because they want to give the company money. Customers buy and use products because the products address their needs.
PMs figure out what game a company is playing, and how it keeps score (hint: it’s not always about how much money the company makes).
PMs must understand both business strategy and execution. They must first figure out who the customers are and what problems the customers have. They must know how to set a vision, T BOOK
finding the right opportunities in a sea of possibilities, by using both data and intuition.
They must know how to work with engineers and designers to THE PRODUC get the right product built, keeping it as simple as possible.
By the way, PMs manage products, not people, so they must achieve everything using soft influence, effective communication, leadership, and trust—not orders.
Even though it’s not always obvious what PMs do from the outside, they genuinely do a lot! PMs do so much that they’re sometimes even called “Mini CEOs.”
think of an engineer who spends her days using cryptic command-line tools—I’m sure you know someone like this! This engineer probably prefers keyboard shortcuts, dislikes GUIs, and favors using code to explicitly specify meaning.
Project managers are most often confused with product managers. While there are many subtle differences, they can be summed up by saying that a project manager owns the schedule and helps ensure the team is on track to meet any deadlines. The project manager will often work with the product manager, and a product manager will provide input on the schedule. Project managers are masters of schedules and Gantt charts, not of representing customers. Program managers are usual y a bit more similar to product managers, but program managers general y focus more on the “getting it built” side, working closely with Engineering and Operations. If you’re building a wearable, for example, the program manager will likely be in touch with the manufacturing facility frequently, whereas a product manager will have limited direct interaction with them. Program managers tend to be masters of execution, sort of like a “super” project manager. To further confuse things, the title that describes what a product manager does varies slightly from company to company. Microsoft, for 12 example, cal s its product managers “Program Managers.”
Product managers are like the conductor in an orchestra. The conductor never makes a sound but is responsible for making the THE PRODUC
product managers should be smart, talented people who can figure things out on their own.
The most common type of product manager is someone with an engineering/computer science background who became 13 interested in business. PMs often start out as individual y contributing engineers who then find themselves taking on more responsibilities: conducting customer interviews, working with Design to validate ideas, and possibly even col aborating with marketing to make sure what they’re working on aligns with customer needs.
Sometimes PMs come from Design, Marketing, or even business school!
PMs don’t need an MBA—in fact, some tech companies prefer not to hire MBAs—nor do they need a sales background.
They should understand the industry of the company they’re interested in and be able to answer the following questions: Who are the customers? Who are the major players? What differentiates one company from another? How do the businesses make money? PMs should also understand basic financial
The most common specialization is technical product management.
Another specialization is strategic product management. This role is the complement to a technical PM, and it’s someone who has a strong business-oriented background.
Put simply, a product manager (PM) represents the customer. No one buys a product because they want to give the company money. Customers buy and use products because the products address their needs.
PMs figure out what game a company is playing, and how it keeps score (hint: it’s not always about how much money the company makes).
PMs must understand both business strategy and execution. They must first figure out who the customers are and what problems the customers have. They must know how to set a vision, T BOOK
finding the right opportunities in a sea of possibilities, by using both data and intuition.
They must know how to work with engineers and designers to THE PRODUC get the right product built, keeping it as simple as possible.
By the way, PMs manage products, not people, so they must achieve everything using soft influence, effective communication, leadership, and trust—not orders.
Even though it’s not always obvious what PMs do from the outside, they genuinely do a lot! PMs do so much that they’re sometimes even called “Mini CEOs.”
think of an engineer who spends her days using cryptic command-line tools—I’m sure you know someone like this! This engineer probably prefers keyboard shortcuts, dislikes GUIs, and favors using code to explicitly specify meaning.
Project managers are most often confused with product managers. While there are many subtle differences, they can be summed up by saying that a project manager owns the schedule and helps ensure the team is on track to meet any deadlines. The project manager will often work with the product manager, and a product manager will provide input on the schedule. Project managers are masters of schedules and Gantt charts, not of representing customers. Program managers are usual y a bit more similar to product managers, but program managers general y focus more on the “getting it built” side, working closely with Engineering and Operations. If you’re building a wearable, for example, the program manager will likely be in touch with the manufacturing facility frequently, whereas a product manager will have limited direct interaction with them. Program managers tend to be masters of execution, sort of like a “super” project manager. To further confuse things, the title that describes what a product manager does varies slightly from company to company. Microsoft, for 12 example, cal s its product managers “Program Managers.”
Product managers are like the conductor in an orchestra. The conductor never makes a sound but is responsible for making the THE PRODUC
product managers should be smart, talented people who can figure things out on their own.
The most common type of product manager is someone with an engineering/computer science background who became 13 interested in business. PMs often start out as individual y contributing engineers who then find themselves taking on more responsibilities: conducting customer interviews, working with Design to validate ideas, and possibly even col aborating with marketing to make sure what they’re working on aligns with customer needs.
Sometimes PMs come from Design, Marketing, or even business school!
PMs don’t need an MBA—in fact, some tech companies prefer not to hire MBAs—nor do they need a sales background.
They should understand the industry of the company they’re interested in and be able to answer the following questions: Who are the customers? Who are the major players? What differentiates one company from another? How do the businesses make money? PMs should also understand basic financial
The most common specialization is technical product management.
Another specialization is strategic product management. This role is the complement to a technical PM, and it’s someone who has a strong business-oriented background.
