Quick Start Guide to Product Management: What I Wish I Knew When Starting in Product Management

✍ Scribed by Trevor Bruner

• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 130
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Getting into Product Management is hard, but it's nothing compared to actually being a product manager. This book gives you a boiled-down condensed version of what you need to know. It's what I wish someone had told me when I started out as a product manager. Think of this as the quick-start guide before diving into bigger, scarier books. Most PM books tell you either how to break into the job or how to excel after you've been in the job for years. This book is meant for those of you just starting out. You've got the job or are in the process of getting the job, but you're still green. How do you start? You're too new to be in charge of the vision & strategy for your company or product, but you still need to contribute. What's that look like? How do you navigate the various stakeholders?Read this book to learn what mindset you need in this job. Learn how to interact with the various departments in your organization, including Sales, Engineering, and the C-Suite. Learn why angry customers aren't the worst thing in the world. Learn a few tips on managing a backlog. After reading this book, you'll have learned some of the key words and tricky phrases that will help you in your career and also to better understand all the other great books on Product Management that you'll read after this one.

✦ Table of Contents

Part I: What’s This Book?
What I hope you get out of this
What this book is not
Structure of the book

Part II: What’s the Job?
Judgment
Influence without authority
No typical way in
Distill it to 5 seconds or less
Product Management is a Full Contact Job
You want (some) angry customers
It’s not Project Management

Section III: How to Start
Get in the way
You Can’t Think Your Way Out of This
Assume your company knows what it’s doing
Get a towel. Read Inspired by Marty Cagan. Learn some vocabulary.
Read The First 90 Days

Section IV: How to get input
Why over What
Types of Requests
Small group sessions
Customer Calls
A/B Testing

Section V: Prioritization & Backlog Management
The ‘Why’ is more important than the ‘What’
Buy a Feature
Frameworks
Backlogs- what are they?
Backlog 1
Backlog 2
Hoarder or Minimalist
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Section VI: Working With Engineers
You are a hummingbird. Engineers are elephants.
Get tight with your engineering manager
Bring problems, not solutions
What are the types of work?
Engineers are optimists. Don’t believe them.
Engineering Career Paths

Section VII: Roadmaps and Release Plans
Roadmaps vs. Release Plans: What are they?
Why two types of presentations?
Their Flexible Nature
Sell your vision

Section VIII: Working With Sales
Sales is Coin-operated
Sales Can't Wait for the Vision
Inspire Confidence in the Product
Be careful taking direction from your Sales team
Section IX: Working With Customers
They're running for dinner. You're running for your life.
Customers suck at explaining problems. They're great at providing solutions.
Customers buy for what the product is today and for what it will be in the future
Customers want to be heard

Section X: Working with the C-Suite
CEO
CPO- Chief Product Officer
CFO- Chief Financial Officer
CRO- Chief Revenue Officer
CCO- Chief Customer Officer
CxO- Chief Officer

Section XI: General Good Things to Know
The Whole Product
If it hurts, do it more
At best, you're the second smartest person in the room
Take Thinking Days
Find your superpower and feed it
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly
“I still don’t understand”

Section XII: Types of Deliverables
Features
Defects
Debt
Risk
Everything Else
Section XIII: The End is just The Beginning