Kent J McDonald, Author at Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference

Top Product Management Conferences To Attend In 2023

Kent J McDonald — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:50:23 +0000

Not so long ago, software product managers were hard-pressed to find conferences designed specifically for them. Product conferences centered around entrepreneurship or technology—leaving product managers (PMs) to glean what they could from the few product management related sessions available.

Today, things are different. A host of product management conferences have sprung up around the world—including virtual events that allow participants to join from anywhere. They range in topics, from product leadership to product development practices to how to grow in your career.

With so many options, it’s hard to choose which to attend. We hope this article gives you the information you need to make the choice on the conference you want to attend—as well as define what you want to get out of the experience

What can you learn at a product management conference?

If you’ve ever sat down with a group of product managers, you’ve probably gleaned that most of us ask ourselves “Am I doing this right?” There’s a bevy of information available online to help you learn about product management—there are even bootcamps, workshops, and certifications you can take. But there’s nothing like a live product conference to really make you feel you fit in. Surrounded by your peers, you learn how different companies are applying product management principles—and you get the reassurance you’re not the only one wondering if you’re doing it right.

But that’s not the only reason to sign up for product manager events. When you attend a live conference, you:

Meet other product people across industries who can provide valuable insights
Hear from renowned product leaders and keynote speakers who are changing the game in technology
Network with peers who share your passions, interests, and struggles as a PM
Learn about new software and technology that can improve your product or processes

What topics do product conferences cover?

The topics covered at a product conference varies depending on the event. Some speak broadly to technology, others present content for full product teams, and still others offer tracks geared specifically toward PMs.

Commons themes you may find in product conference tracks include:

Product strategy
Product development processes
User experience design
Product operations
Product analytics

Top conferences to attend in 2023

Looking to learn and grow as a PM in 2023? Look no further. Here are the top conferences to check out.

INDUSTRY

INDUSTRY offers attendees incredible keynotes, interactive Q&As, networking, and exclusive content to help you build, launch, and scale world-class software products. The premier conference for PMs, INDUSTRY is available virtually and around the globe.

Conference Link:https://www.industryconference.com/

Who should attend this conference: Software product managers

Why attend this conference: At Product Collective, we’ve organized INDUSTRY since its inception in 2015. So we’re definitely biased about its greatness, but hear us out: As product people ourselves, we have a lot of passion for this field. And, because of that, we spend asignificant amount of time and energy to make INDUSTRY an outstanding experience for product management professionals.

If you’ve ever been, you know that INDUSTRY is so much more than a conference—it’s a community. Besides keynotes from product professionals and leaders, there are roundtable discussions, interactive Q&As, and an event Slack group to help you connect with and learn from your peers. You’ll also receive recordings of and comprehensive notes from keynote sessions that allow you to focus on the conversation—not taking notes. So, yeah, it’s a pretty great event.

When and Where to attend:

INDUSTRY Europe (Dublin, Ireland): March 20 – 22, 2023
New York Product Conference (New York City, New York USA): May 4, 2023
INDUSTRY Virtual (Anywhere): May 18, 2022
INDUSTRY Global (Cleveland, Ohio USA): October 2 – 4, 2023

Cost:

INDUSTRY Europe: €1195 Conference / €1895 Plus (includes 4-hour workshop) / €2495 Super Pass (Includes 2 4-hour workshops)
New York Product Conference: $795 General Admission / $1,295 Super Pass (includes 4-hour virtual workshop)
INDUSTRY Virtual: $99 General Admission
INDUSTRY Global: $1195 Conference / $1,795 Plus (includes 4-hour workshop) / $2,395 Super Pass (Includes 2 4-hour workshops)

Discounts are available for early registration.

ProductWorld

ProductWorld unites 1,500 tech product managers and product developers for a combined conference and trade show. The event is co-located with DeveloperWeek, where 8,000 software engineers and IT managers converge each year.

Conference Link: https://productworld.co/about/

Who should attend this conference: Technically minded product managers and product developers

Why attend this conference: ProductWorld boasts an impressive lineup from Silicon Valley’s top tech companies. The conference covers a variety of topics, including:

Product development lifecycle
Agile management and rapid prototyping
New product management software and technologies
Roles, responsibilities, and resources for product teams
How to grow in your product management career
Usability and interface design

When and Where to attend:

San Francisco, CA USA: February 15-17, 2023
Virtual: February 21-23, 2023

Cost:

Pro Pass: $875
Premium Pass: 1595

Discounts are available for early registration

#ProductCon

ProductCon is an event that takes place multiple times a year and gathers over 15,000 product professionals from around the world.

Conference Link: https://productschool.com/productcon/

Who should attend this conference: Senior Product Managers, Directors of Product, Heads of Product Management, VPs of Product, or Chief Product Officers

Why attend this conference: ProductCon offers the opportunity to hear from product leaders at tech giants such as Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify. You’ll hear about new ideas you can immediately implement—and gain contacts who may become future customers. If you’re a product leader, you may also enjoy and benefit from ProductCon’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in tech. The agenda highlights product leaders from diverse backgrounds and leaders of color and offers a panel on DE&I.

When and Where to Attend:

London, UK (January 31, 2023)
Online (July 20, 2023)
San Francisco (October, 2023)

Cost:

London, UK Virtual Access Free; Live Admission £599.
Online: General Admission: $149; VIP $228.
San Francisco: General Admission: $399; VIP $799.

Discounts available for early registration

Mind the Product

Mind the Product is the world’s largest product management conference with annual flagship conferences in San Francisco, Singapore, and London. Mind the Product also hosts a regional conference in Hamburg.

Conference Link: https://www.mindtheproduct.com/conferences/

Who should attend this conference: Product managers, product teams, current or future startup founders

Why attend this conference: Mind the Product offers in-person, digital-only, and hybrid conferences that make it possible for anyone to attend—regardless of location. The conference explores the intersection of technology, design, and business with the goal of helping people build better products. Speakers range from authors to CEOs to directors.

Where to Attend: San Francisco, CA; Hamburg, Germany; London & EMEA

When to attend: Dates are not set for 2023. Check out each event for more details.

Cost: Prices vary depending on location, type of event, and package. Check out each event for more details.

Product-Led Summit

The Product-Led Summit is the largest gathering of product-led leaders. The Product-Led Summit and its sibling event, The CPO Summit, attract attendees from large global companies like LinkedIn, Amazon, and Salesforce.

Conference Link: https://productledworld.com/

Who should attend this conference: SaaS product managers, product owners, and product leaders

Why attend this conference: This conference is perfect for companies that currently leverage product-led growth (PLG) or that want to implement a product-led approach. The content covers everything PLG—freemium models, flywheels, building product-led growth teams, PLG decision-making, and more.

When and Where to Attend:

Austin, Texas USA: February 15 – 16, 2023
New York City, New York USA: March 15 – 16, 2023
Amsterdam, Netherlands: May 10 – 11, 2023
Las Vegas, Nevada USA: May 24 – 25, 2023
San Francisco, California USA: September 6 – 7, 2023
Sydney, Australia: November 1 – 2, 2023
Singapore: November 8, 2023

Cost: $795-$1,695, depending on pass and level of access

ProductCamp

Hailed as an “unconference”, ProductCamp is a series of conversation-driven events where product people can share their experiences—and hear from other product professionals.

Conference Link: https://www.productcamp.org/

Who should attend this conference: Product managers, UX designers, marketers, and people involved in developing digital products

Why attend this conference: While ProductCamp isn’t a traditional conference, there’s a lot of benefit to be had in connecting with peers in the product space. ProductCamp gives participants an opportunity to share what they’re working on, what they’re learning, and where they struggle. This interactive forum can spur ideas and build new connections that help you grow in your product career.

Where to Attend: ProductCamp occurs in many major cities around the world

When to attend: Dates vary by location. Check out ProductCamp’s website to get notifications of upcoming camps.

Cost: Free

How to choose the best product manager conference for you

To choose the right product management seminar for you, consider your goals.

Do you want to network with potential employers? Look at the companies attending.
Do you want to build relationships with product peers who you can collaborate and brainstorm with? Make sure you choose a conference with breakouts.
Do you want to learn practical ways to grow in your career? See if the agenda includes sessions on career growth.
Do you want to improve a skill, like design thinking or roadmap planning? Make sure there are interactive workshops on the topics you’re interested in.
Do you need insight on how to solve a specific problem? See if the conference offers case studies from companies who have navigated similar issues.

Whether you attend a conference that’s free or paid is up to you—and may depend on your company’s learning and development budget. If you don’t have the budget to attend conferences, free product management digital conferences may be a great fit for you. When it comes to paying for attendance, many conferences offer “convince your boss” packets that help you make the business case for attending. A standout benefit to attending a live conference, when possible, is the quality of connections you can make.

We hope this helps you choose the best product management conference for you!

The post Top Product Management Conferences To Attend In 2023 appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Product Discovery

Kent J McDonald — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 16:43:33 +0000

Enjoy this article?
Get much more by downloading this 18,000 word Ultimate Guide for Product Managers. Find the best newsletters, communities, books, and valuable articles on product discovery, strategy, careers and more!

A crucial piece of a product manager’s job is determining what products to build and why. To make that decision, you really need to understand the customers that your company is trying to serve and what problems you’re helping them solve.

Product discovery is the commonly used term for the activities that product teams follow to understand your customers and their problems. The way product teams approach product discovery is in a constant state of flux as more and more product teams try new techniques and share what they find out.

This collection of resources provides a look at how the concept of product discovery came about, some in-depth guides on how to perform product discovery, and some examples of how product teams approach product discovery in their company.

The Origin Of Product Discovery

As a product manager, you’ve no doubt heard about the importance of product discovery and the interaction between discovery and delivery. But have you ever wondered how the term “product discovery” was coined?

In this post, Marty Cagan, Product Consultant and Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group, claims credit for coining the term product discovery as a way to describe figuring out what to build and to replace the phrase “gathering and defining requirements.”

Read on, here.

Product Discovery Basics: Everything You Need To Know

While there are many methods you can use for product discovery, the underlying principle is simple: Product discovery is a decision-making process. Good product discovery includes your customer throughout the process.

In this article, Teresa Torres, a product discovery coach, explains what product discovery is, why you should do continuous discovery instead of project- based discovery, and who is primarily responsible for product discovery.

This article also serves as a great jumping off point for several other resources on Teresa’s site. Those resources provide a deeper exploration of a variety of product discovery topics.

Read on, here.

How To Do Product Discovery

Product discovery is a set of activities you perform to define where, when, and if you should evolve your product. Those activities are helpful because you’re trying to solve complex problems, and the many variables involved make it impossible to find simple and definitive answers.

JB, an engineer and product manager, describes the basics for good product discovery and provides a small initial guide to make it easier to make your first product discoveries.

Read on, here.

Product Discovery: A Practical Guide For Product Teams

Tim Herbig, product management coach and consultant, created this guide to show you how to go beyond clichéd advice (like “just talk to users more often”) to make sure that the practice of product discovery helps teams make real progress. Tim describes the exact techniques that he uses to help product teams navigate the uncertainty of exploring the problem space of their user segments and to identify solutions that are worth building. If you want to make sure that you’re building the right product for the right audience, you’ll love this guide.

Read on, here.

Can You Provide Insight Into How You Work With Product Discovery?

Gib Biddle, former Netflix/Chegg VP/CPO, explains how he approaches product discovery by telling the story of how he used product discovery to address whether or not Netflix should pursue one of the CEO’s pet projects: previews for movies and TV shows.

From that experience, Gib learned to do research by blending four sources of data: existing data, qualitative, surveys, and AB test results to develop consumer insight about how to delight customers.

Read on, here.

The New York Times Product Discovery Activity Guide

The product teams at The New York Times adopted a data-driven, experimental approach to make sure that they were able to effectively integrate discovery and delivery.

To help with this effort, the teams developed a Product Discovery Activity Guide that rolled up activities, exercises, and testing techniques from various resources.

Al Ming, VP of Product Management at Scripps Networks Interactive, describes how the Product Discovery Activity Guide is structured and shares a version that you can use to help guide the discovery efforts of your team.

Read on, here.

How We Set Up Our Team For Continuous Product Discovery

As the world changes around you, your user needs change rapidly as well. On top of that, your competitors aren’t standing still and continue to introduce new functionality. With all that change going on, how can you make sure that the features you come up with today are still relevant in upcoming weeks or months?

Alexander Hipp, Founder of Beyond, PM Library & Riptide, explains why continuously running product discovery alongside shipping features can benefit your business goals as well as create value for your users.

Read on, here.

A 4-step Guide For Day-to-day Product Discovery

Building successful digital products requires two things: building the right product (product discovery) and building the product right (product delivery). While the intersection of product discovery and product delivery is nothing new, Sophia Höfling, Head of Product at Saiga, has found that delivery receives much more attention from product teams and senior management than discovery.

To address that imbalance, Sophia put together a guide that explains the four main aspects that have helped her champion continuous product discovery. The guide is targeted at teams or product leaders who are looking for some inspiration on how to get started with a more balanced, outcome-driven way of product development.

Read on, here.

What Is Product Discovery And Why Does It Matter?

In an ideal world, your team would clearly understand your customers’ needs before starting a new product or initiative. But customers’ needs change, and your product initiatives must change with them.

The folks from Hotjar put together this guide to product discovery that describes what product discovery is, shares a set of discovery questions that you can use, suggests a product discovery process to follow, and explores 11 product discovery tools.

Read on, here.

Product Discovery Playbook

Product discovery is an exercise in working out whether there are customers who want the product you’re working on and that you can deliver a solution to them.

Product discovery comes in different shapes and sizes, depending on the situation. Product discovery for a new feature is different from product discovery for an entirely new venture. You might run product discovery continuously, or you might—for various reasons—only be able to run your discovery efforts with a defined start and finish. No matter what, there are some essential elements that you will most likely include.

Scott Middleton, CEO and Founder of terem.tech, shared this playbook that focuses on the essential elements for running product discovery, including the key concepts, inputs, activities, and outputs. It’s constructed and back-tested against many discoveries that Scott and his team ran at Terem.

Read on, here.

The post Product Discovery appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Top Product Management Newsletters 2022

Kent J McDonald — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 17:17:37 +0000

One of the great things about the broader product management community is that there are many people who are willing to share what they’ve learned through experience.

And it’s not always rainbows and unicorns. There’s a sizable group of people who are willing to share the good, the bad, and the ugly that is product management.

A good way to find these nuggets is to subscribe to some of the many regularly published product management newsletters.

Here’s a collection of newsletters that cover a wide range of product management topics. Some newsletters share long-form content from the newsletter author. Others are curated around a specific topic.

If you want to keep up on the latest in product management ideas and learn from others’ experience, you can’t go wrong by subscribing to these newsletters.

Product Collective

If you build, launch, and scale world-class software products, the Product Collective newsletter is for you!

Every Friday, we send you a curated collection of resources focused on a topic of particular interest to product people. On any given Friday, you’ll see resources from the usual suspects in the product management world, as well as resources from some lesser-known sources that provide a different but still relevant perspective.

The newsletter also contains original content exploring the world of product management and announcements about upcoming Product Collective events and offerings, like this resource guide.

If you haven’t already, join 40,000+ other product people who are learning the latest methods, tools, and frameworks for software product management.

Productled

Product-led growth is rapidly changing the way companies go to market, and in this newsletter, we unpack some of the top product-led strategies, tactics, and case studies.

Every Sunday, you’ll receive some of the top content on product-led growth with a fresh perspective.

Join 25K+ other PLG professionals and practitioners. Get early access to product-led content, interactive videos, templates, in-depth guides, and research that you won’t find anywhere else.

Department Of Product Newsletter

The world of product management is constantly changing. If you want to keep up with the latest industry news, analysis, or product management techniques, then you should read the Department of Product newsletter.

Every week, the folks at the Department of Product share the latest product announcements and news as well as curate some of the most insightful articles for product people.

Whether you’re a practicing product manager, a venture capitalist, or in an educational institution, the Department of Product newsletter will keep you up to date on the latest in the world of product.

Product Talk Newsletter

Are you a product leader, a user experience advocate, or a startup founder who wants to build great digital products?

Teresa Torres, a product discovery coach, writes Product Talk to help you better understand your users and customers, incorporate experiments into your product development process, and make data-informed product decisions.

Teresa publishes the Product Talk newsletter bi-weekly (roughly). The content alternates between easy-to-digest and immediately actionable original product-discovery- focused articles and curated recommendations of other product-management-focused resources.

Product Thoughts Newsletter

If you’d like to get better at building products that make a difference, you may want to subscribe to Tim Herbig’s newsletter.

Tim is a product management coach and consultant with a mission to help product teams focus on outcomes and make real progress toward meaningful goals through self-determined and evidence-based decision-making.

His weekly “Product Thoughts” newsletter combines actionable advice based on his own experience, as well as practical articles on product strategy, product goals, and product discovery from across the web.

What is Product Management – Lenny’s Newsletter

If you’re interested in thoughts on growth and product management from a startup perspective, then you may want to take a look at “What is product management” by Lenny Rachitsky.

Lenny is a writer, startup advisor, angel investor, founder, and former product leader. He writes a weekly subscriber-only newsletter that tackles reader questions about product, growth, and general work topics. Once a month, he writes a free version of his newsletter that’s available to everyone.

The “What is product management” newsletter is a great source of experienced-based, actionable advice for common product management challenges, especially for startups and tech companies.

Product Management Newsletters By Jock Busuttil

Jock Busuttil is a freelance head of product, author, and conference speaker. He has helped companies ranging from startups to multinationals improve their product management practices. You don’t have to work for one of the companies that Jock is helping to take advantage of his experience. He regularly shares his insights through a couple of different newsletters.

If you’re into long-form explorations of product-management-related topics, subscribe to “I Manage Products” to get an email update when he publishes his newest article. You can also read past articles on his blog, including an ongoing series on the 100 things he’s learned.

If you’re interested in pointers to useful articles, videos, and podcasts covering a particular product management topic, subscribe to “PRODUCTHEAD,” Jock’s weekly curated newsletter. Jock provides some commentary on the topic and includes links to resources that he found particularly helpful.

The Beautiful Mess

We’re all trying to work our way through the “beautiful mess” that is cross-functional product development. Fortunately, there’s a guide who can help us cut through the whole mess: John Cutler.

John is the Head of Product Education, Product Evangelist, and Coach at Amplitude. As part of that role, he has the opportunity to interact with several cross-functional product development teams at a wide variety of companies.

Since 2020, he has written a weekly newsletter—“The Beautiful Mess”—in which he shares his observations and advice. This newsletter goes beyond product management to include product design and how teams work with each other and everyone else in the organization.

Inside Product

As more enterprises undertake digital and product transformations, there’s a new set of product people trying to figure out how product management fits in their organization. Kent McDonald publishes “Inside Product” to provide advice to people trying to fit product management in different contexts.

Kent McDonald is a writer and product manager who uses his extensive background in business analysis and product development to explain product development to people working in tech-enabled organizations in industries such as financial services, insurance, and retail.

“Inside Product” is a weekly email with handpicked resources focused on applying product management practices and techniques to products that don’t generate revenue directly, but are essential for interactions with customers and business operations.

Product Bytes

If you’d like an honest view of what product management in a software product company really looks like, there’s no better place to look than Rich Mironov’s “Product Bytes.”

Rick is a seasoned veteran of several software product companies and now coaches product executives, product management teams, and revenue software organizations. He’s also “parachuted” into software companies, where he acted as an interim VP of Product / CPO.

“Product Bytes” is his long-running newsletter on software, startups, product strategies, Silicon Valley, and the inner life of product managers. There’s a new issue roughly monthly featuring Rich’s insights on product leadership, organizing the product organization, scaling up, and tackling software-product-company-specific challenges.

The Adam Thomas Product Newsletter

If you’re a product manager or product leader, you know your only constant is change. Even when you focus your efforts to help your team make more consistent, high-quality decisions, sometimes it feels as if you are fighting quicksand.

Adam Thomas has been there and wants to help you work through it. Adam Thomas is a product coach with over a decade of experience as a product manager and product leader. He uses what he learned during that time to help product managers get better at outcome-driven decision-making and ship products that make a difference.

Adam publishes his newsletter every other Sunday morning. His newsletter includes his insights on product management, leadership, and strategy, along with occasional observations on culture and behavioral psychology.

The post Top Product Management Newsletters 2022 appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Ultimate Guide to Product Management Podcasts

Kent J McDonald — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 17:36:23 +0000

People in the product management community are not only good about sharing lots of information, they are also good at varying the way in which they share that information. If you prefer to read to find out about other product people’s experiences, there are plenty of articles and newsletters that you can read. If you prefer to listen to their experiences, you can attend a conference, or you can listen to one of the many podcasts that are out there covering a wide range of product management topics.

Here’s a list of the podcasts that we recommend you listen to for a wealth of product management goodness. These podcasts vary in formats ranging from interviews with experienced product managers and product leaders to Q&A formats to conversational podcasts that combine elements of both. Check these podcasts out, subscribe to the ones you want to hear on a regular basis, or search the archives for episodes from different podcasts to get multiple perspectives on a particular topic.

Rocketship.fm

If you’re an entrepreneur, product manager, or anyone working in tech, the Rocketship.fm podcast is essential listening.

That’s mostly because the podcast covers key topics including product management, growth, sales, and funding. It’s also because the folks here at Product Collective partner to produce the podcast, and our own Mike Belsito hosts the podcast along with Michael Sacca, General Manager at Dribble.

Rocketship.fm uses a combination of entertaining storytelling and insightful interviews to inspire and change the way you think about product and business. The podcast is organized into seasons consisting of several episodes covering a specific topic.

Listen

Intercom on Product

Intercom, a maker of a popular all-in-one customer communication platform, is really good at sharing how their business works, including their approach to product development.

In their podcast, Intercom on Product, Intercom Co-Founder Des Traynor and SVP of Product Paul Adams share their latest thoughts on how to build a great product.

The episodes come out every few months and are like listening in on Des and Paul having an in-depth conversation on some topic pertinent to product management.

Some of those topics include how to run a product organization at scale, how to balance customer feedback on your product roadmap, how to spread a product-first mentality throughout a company, and how to maintain design excellence in a fast-growing R&D team.

If you’re a product designer, product manager, engineer, or anyone working in product development, you’ll find these periodic conversations really valuable.

Listen

The Product Experience Podcast

In addition to hosting conferences and providing a community for product people, the folks at Mind the Product also produce The Product Experience podcast.

Lily Smith, Head of Innovation at Go Compare, and Randy Silver, an interactive producer and product manager, host the podcast. The pair couples their deep background in product management with the specific experiences of their guests.

In each weekly episode, Lily and Randy chat with product people from around the globe. The topics include solving real problems, developing awesome products, building successful teams, and developing careers.

Listen

This is Product Management

One of the longest-running product management podcasts, This Is Product Management highlights the wide variety of disciplines involved in product management.

The podcast is produced by Feedback Loop, the agile research platform for rapid consumer feedback.

The podcast has a rotating set of hosts who interview guests with unique insights into how different disciplines play into modern product teams.

If you’ve ever wondered if a particular business topic is related to product management, check the archive of this podcast. Chances are that there’s an episode covering that topic.

Listen

Product Love

Have you ever had a product with which you had an incredible and joyous connection?

If so, you’ve had what Eric Boduch, Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder of Pendo, refers to as “product love.”

In his Product Love podcast, Eric asks leading industry product managers and their brilliant teams what makes certain products so lovable.

This podcast dives into the evolving craft of product management and trends in the industry with the best executive product leaders across various disciples.

Listen

Product Thinking Podcast

Successful product management isn’t just about working side by side with developers every day to build better products. It’s also about discovery, how an organization approaches product as a whole, and leveling up product leadership accordingly.

Melissa Perri, product coach and Founder of ProduX Labs, covers these topics and more in the Product Thinking podcast.

The weekly podcast episodes alternate between interviews with product management and Q&A sessions that answer your most pressing product questions.

Tune in each week or check out the archive to level up your skill set and invest in yourself as a product person.

Listen

One Knight In Product Podcast

If you’re involved in designing, managing, building or marketing products, you’ll want to listen to Jason Knight’s One Knight in Product podcast.

Jason is Product Lead at DueDil, a London-based RegTech startup, and has a history building disruptive products.

One Knight in Product is a fireside chat-style podcast in which Jason speaks with people in and around product management to get their perspectives, learn from their experiences, and share their stories.

The podcast covers a range of guests from seasoned product leaders to people trying to break into product management.

Listen to One Knight in Product to get some inspiration from a wide range of experiences, work more effectively, build better products, and be a better leader.

Listen

The ProductLed Podcast

Looking for a regular diet of useful information about product-led growth? Every week, there’s a new episode of the ProductLed podcast that dissects how world-class product leaders use their product to grow their business.

The ProductLed podcast has two product growth experts who alternate hosting the podcast. Those include Wes Bush, Founder and CEO of ProductLed, and Maja Voje, growth advisor and practitioner.

Most episodes of the podcast feature interviews with product-led growth experts. Some episodes feature conversations between two of the hosts.

Listen

How I Built This with Guy Raz

If you want to understand product management in tech companies, it’s helpful to understand how those tech companies have been built.

How I Built This is a great podcast to get that kind of insight. How I Built This is hosted by Guy Raz, an independent producer and former journalist.

The podcast dives into the stories behind some of the world’s best-known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists—and the movements they built.

Listen

Product Science Podcast

The world of product management places a large emphasis on experimentation, which means that it’s helpful to understand the scientific process. Holly Hester-Reilly’s Product Science Podcast provides insight into how the scientific process and product management intersect.

Holly is a product coach, founder of H2R Product Science, and former product manager and product leader.

The podcast is for startup founders and product leaders building high-growth products, teams, and companies. It features real conversations with the people who have tried it and aren’t afraid to share the lessons they’ve learned (and the mistakes they’ve made) along the way.

Listen

The post Ultimate Guide to Product Management Podcasts appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Best Product Management Conference Series

Kent J McDonald — Wed, 25 May 2022 17:04:00 +0000

Enjoy this article?
Get much more by downloading this 18,000-word Ultimate Guide for Product Managers. Find the best newsletters, communities, books, and valuable articles on product discovery, strategy, careers, and more!

Product management is a career that relies heavily on communication, collaboration, and continuous learning.

That’s one reason why product management conferences are such a great way to expand your skills and expand your network.

The conference series that we describe below all have an established track record of helping attendees learn new skills and form new connections, whether they are in person, hybrid, or fully virtual.

So, if you’re looking to get away for a couple of days and immerse yourself in the world of product management, consider going to one (or more!) of these events. You won’t regret it.

New York Product Conference

The New York Product Conference is an annual series of in-person conferences held every fall in New York City. It’s a place for 400 product managers to get together to learn the latest methods, tools, and frameworks used to build, launch, and scale world-class software products.

Product Collective acquired the New York Product Conference in 2021 as a way of expanding their INDUSTRY: The Product Conference footprint.

The New York Product Conference combines the focus on the New York product community of past New York Product Conferences with the varied content of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

The format includes 10 to 25-minute talks from experienced product people followed by Q&A sessions with the presenters. The conference format also includes plenty of networking time and a product expo that provides the best aspects of in-person conferences.

Learn more.

INDUSTRY: The Product Conference

INDUSTRY: The Product Conference is the premier global software product management conference with thousands of attendees at past events in North America and Europe.

INDUSTRY conferences are typically in person, but when the situation dictated, Product Collective (the people behind the conference) shifted seamlessly to a virtual format.

The conferences are multi-day events that give you the opportunity to get away from execution mode and focus on improving your skills and building your network. The day before the main conference, you have the opportunity to take a deep dive into a particular topic in a half-day workshop.

The main conference offers the chance to hear from experienced product managers and product leaders during their main stage talks. The Talk Shop sessions also provide focused Q&A time with those presenters.

If you’re interested in networking with other product people, there are plenty of opportunities including group discussions, networking events, and attendee dinners.

On top of all that, you don’t have to furiously scribble notes during the talks because Product Collective sends out comprehensive notes for each session that include key takeaways. Reporting back to your boss about what you learned has never been easier!

Learn more.

Mind the Product Conferences

Mind the Product conferences cover a wide variety of topics of interest to product managers. They host two-day flagship conferences annually in San Francisco, Singapore, and London.

These conferences are hybrid, with the first day being entirely virtual and the second day offering in-person or streaming options. Both days offer talks from experienced product people and plenty of networking opportunities such as roundtable discussions and virtual speed networking.

The learning doesn’t stop at the end of the conference, because each conference admission gives you an annual Mind the Product membership. One of the benefits of that membership are videos of all the talks from the conferences.

Mind the Product also produces a regional three-day conference in Hamburg, Germany. This conference includes a day of interactive workshops, a full conference day with talks and networking, and a half-day leadership forum for product leaders.

Learn more.

ProductTank – Mind The Product

The large conferences provide the opportunity to meet product people from across the globe. There’s also a lot of value in interacting with the product people in your local community.

ProductTank gives product managers a means for hosting meetups in their local area. From the initial ProductTank that formed in London in 2010, there are now Product- Tanks in over 200 cities.

Mind the Product vets and supports the organizers of the local ProductTanks. Those volunteers then plan and host their meetings.

You can think of ProductTank meetings as local product management user groups. The meetings are free to attend and can be either in person or virtual. The organizers of the local ProductTanks select the topic, the location, and the time. Often, those topics are product management topics that have a lot of relevance for their local area.

Learn more.

ProductCamp

If you’re looking for the experiences you get with a full-day in-person conference without the travel, you may want to see if your local area has a ProductCamp coming up.

ProductCamps are free “unconferences” for product managers and product marketing managers. These conferences are organized by product people for product people. The organizers are usually product managers in the local area who volunteer their time to pull the event together.

When you attend an unconference like ProductCamp, plan to be an active participant. Whether you give a talk on a topic of interest to you, facilitate a discussion, or volunteer in some other way, you’re a part of the conference.

If this type of event sounds interesting, but you don’t see an event coming up near you, you can always start one yourself. Organizing a ProductCamp is a great way to meet other product people and to gain new skills that will surely add to your product management career.

Learn more.

Business of Software

If you’re interested in learning more about how product fits into the bigger picture of SaaS and software companies, then you should check out the Business of Software (BoS) conference.

BoS events are targeted toward anyone trying to build, run, and scale a great software company. So, you’re likely to run into company founders and entrepreneurs as well as other product people.

The topics covered include growth, strategy, product management, company culture, leadership and more. BoS offers single-day online conferences multiple times a year as well as two-day in-person conferences in Europe and North America annually. The in-person conferences offer a combination of talks, group discussions, and multiple opportunities for networking.

Learn more.

Front – The Product Conference for UX Designers and Product Managers

If you’re looking for an event that places equal emphasis on user experience and product management and their intersection, then look no further than Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Front series of conferences are the product conference for UX designers and product managers. These multi-day conferences aim to be practitioners’ conferences that provide real-world actionable information. Front produces two conferences a year, each with a different format.

If you attend the Front Case Study Conference, you’ll hear product leaders or UX designer and product manager pairs describe their experiences and what they learned. You’ll hear how product management and product design work together in some well-known tech companies.

If you attend the Front Workshop Conference, you’ll get the opportunity to attend half-day workshops, moderated roundtable discussions, and a variety of networking events. This is definitely the event for you if you prefer a more active approach to learning about the intersection of design and product management.

Learn more.

Product Management Festival

If you’re a product person in Europe or Asia-Pacific (or would like to travel to one of those regions) and want to gather with other product managers, you may want to look into the Product Management Festival.

The Product Management Festival is an in-person two-day conference that offers a combination of keynotes for all attendees and breakout sessions in four separate tracks for you to choose your own adventure conference experience.

The breakout sessions are in a variety of formats including talks, case studies, workshops, and coaching sessions, so you can find the session that best fits your preferred learning style. Each session is led by a practicing product person, so you can be assured that you’re receiving insights from someone who’s been there and done that.

If you’re worried about picking the right sessions that you want to go to, each morning and afternoon session starts with speaker pitches so that you can hear straight from the presenters about why you should go to their session.

Learn more.

The post Best Product Management Conference Series appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Product Management Twitter Follows

Kent J McDonald — Wed, 25 May 2022 16:29:01 +0000

Let’s face it: When it comes time to discuss social media networks, there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. Twitter is no exception to that.

Fortunately, in the world of product management, there’s still a lot of good that comes from Twitter, and that’s due to all the people who use Twitter for good: sharing helpful resources and sparking insightful and productive debates about product-management-related topics.

Here’s a collection of Twitter accounts that we suggest you follow to get a good dose of product management insight and information.

Product Collective

Well, of course we’re going to suggest our Twitter presence!

Follow us on Twitter to find out about the tips that we share in our newsletter, as well as links to other useful product management resources we find out there.

You’ll also get announcements about INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, as well as our other activities.

Follow Product Collective

Andrea Saez

Andrea has a background in product marketing, product management, and customer success. She writes frequently about product management, growth strategies, and community engagement.

When you follow her on Twitter, you can find her most recent article explaining some aspects of product management or asking questions to better understand product communication challenges.

Follow Andrea

Wes Bush

Wes Bush is the Founder and CEO of ProductLed. He is the bestselling author of Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself, and is one of the most sought-after product experts in the world. After working for some of the world’s fastest-growing companies in the world, today he trains teams around the globe on how to turn their product into a powerful growth engine.

Follow Wes

Lenny Rachitsky

A former Airbnb product leader, Lenny is now a full-time writer of his own paid newsletter—aptly named “Lenny’s Newsletter.” It’s no surprise that his entertaining and instructive writing lends itself well to the Twitterverse, too.

Even if you’re not a subscriber to his newsletter, you’ll often find him breaking down complex product management issues into easily digestible content that anybody can take in quickly.

Follow Lenny

Jackie Bavaro

Jackie (literally) wrote the book on Cracking the PM Interview and on Cracking the PM Career.

When you follow Jackie on Twitter, you can get her insights from her wide range of experience as a product manager and product leader. Those insights typically focus on finding and securing your next product management job and on having a successful product management career.

Follow Jackie

Nick Caldwell

Nick’s background and career in tech is pretty tough to match. Currently, he’s the GM of Core Tech for Twitter—but also serves on the Board of Directors at HubSpot, True, and /dev/color.

The Product Collective community may remember learning from Nick when he spoke at INDUSTRY in the past. But you can check in with him daily for tech/product inspiration.

Follow Nick

Teresa Torres

Teresa is a product discovery coach and author who helps digital product teams adopt continuous product discovery practices including a regular cadence of customer interviews, rapid prototyping, and assumption testing.

When you follow Teresa on Twitter, you’ll find out about her most recent resources about product discovery as well as links to other resources that she finds useful on the topics of customer interviews and continuous discovery.

Follow Teresa

Shreyas Doshi

Shreyas is a startup advisor with a background as a product manager and engineer at several tech companies.

When you follow Shreyas on Twitter, you’ll gain access to his thoughts about product, strategy, organizational psychology, leadership, and life that are especially relevant if you’re in a startup or a large enterprise.

Follow Shreyas

Hà Phan

Hà Phan is a product leader in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with a strong user experience background.

When you follow Hà on Twitter, you’ll get insights into managing AI and ML products, the intersection of design and product management, and general thoughts about working on a product team.

Follow Hà

Janna Bastow

Janna Bastow is a founder and product manager. She invented the Now/Next/Later roadmap and is the Co-Founder of Mind the Product and ProdPad.

When you follow Janna on Twitter, you’ll get perspective on product management in general and roadmaps in particular.

Follow Janna

Oji Udezue

Oji has held several notable product leadership positions at places like Calendly, Atlassian, and elsewhere—and today, he serves as a Product Lead at Twitter. But aside from working on the platform, he’s also a great contributor to the site … especially when it comes to product management content.

Oji is a frequent speaker, too, so while he’s appeared at INDUSTRY in the past, don’t be surprised if you see him return in the future!

Follow Oji

Emily Patterson

Emily Patterson is a product leader with a background in business analysis, project management, and bridging the business–IT group. Her current area of focus is tech product management and information security.

When you follow Emily on Twitter, you’ll get her perspectives on product management as well as some helpful pointers for product people about information security.

Follow Emily P.

Emily Tate

Emily Tate is the Managing Director for Mind the Product. Prior to that, Emily was a product leader and product manager in the travel industry.

When you follow Emily on Twitter, you’ll get her perspectives on product management as well as pointers to the best things going on in the broader product management community.

Follow Emily T.

Jason Fried

Jason Fried is the Founder and CEO of Basecamp. He has made a point of sharing his thoughts on running a software company in his blog, books, and frequent podcast appearances. He’s also been an occasional speaker at INDUSTRY.

When you follow Jason on Twitter, you’ll get insights into running a remote first company, the ShapeUp approach to product development, and plenty of announcements about Basecamp and their email application HEY.

Follow Jason

Merci Grace

Merci Grace is a product leader, active angel investor, advisor to early-stage startups, and the founder of the Women in Product Community.

When you follow Merci on Twitter, you’ll get her perspectives on working in startups, pointers to resources for women in product, and great one-liners such as “If you’re an engineer returning from lunch do you say, ‘And now back to our regularly scheduled programming?’”

Follow Merci

Josh Elman

Josh Elman is a product leader and venture partner on the board of Medium, Discord, and Mammoth Media. His background includes being an engineer for audio and video products, and being a product manager working on growth and engagement teams.

When you follow Josh on Twitter, you get his observations about product leadership and about how product decisions influence business overall. You’ll also get some observations about current events tied back to product management.

Follow Josh

Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky is Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud. He’s the author of The Messy Middle, a guide to navigating the volatility of new ventures and leading bold creative projects, as well as of Making Ideas Happen, a book that explains how to overcome the barriers that prevent you from making your ideas reality.

When you follow Scott, you’ll get his insights into how to help organize and empower the careers of creative people. He also speaks to the intersection of technology and design.

Follow Scott

David Cancel

David Cancel is the Co-Founder and CEO of Drift and author of Conversational Marketing. David has a background in creating hypergrowth products and leading product teams at companies such as HubSpot, Performable, Ghostery, and Compete.

David frequently retweets useful perspectives on working in tech companies and startups, and shares his own perspectives on those same topics.

Follow David

Julie Zhuo

Julie Zhuo is Co-Founder of Inspirit, an advisory firm that partners with fast-scaling tech companies to build and scale products that people love. Prior to founding Inspirit, Julie was VP of design and research for the Facebook app. She is also the author of the leadership book The Making of a Manager.

When you follow Julie on Twitter, you’ll see her perspective about products, the interaction of product managers and designers, and what it’s like to lead people.

Follow Julie

Melissa Perri

Melissa Perri is the CEO and Founder of Produx Labs and Product Institute. She’s also a professor at Harvard Business School and author of Escaping the Build Trap.

When you follow Melissa on Twitter, you’ll get insights into how to grow great product leaders and scale your company’s product organizations. She also conveys product management lessons by commenting on the less-than-stellar experience that some products provide.

Follow Melissa

Dan Olsen

Dan Olsen is a product management trainer and consultant who helps executives build great products and strong product teams. He’s the author of The Lean Product Playbook and Founder of the Lean Product Meetup.

When you follow Dan on Twitter, you’ll get announcements about the product people he’s talking to at Lean Product Meetup, as well as pointers to great product management resources.

Follow Dan

Ellen Chisa

Ellen Chisa is Founder-in-Residence at boldstart ventures. Her background includes being an engineer and product manager.

If you follow Ellen on Twitter, you’ll see notes about what she’s thinking about now including founding a startup, building experiences and interfaces, developer relations, and venture capital. You also may come across in-depth discussions about crossword puzzles, cooking, baking, cocktails, and embroidery!

Follow Ellen

Product Management Communities on Twitter

For those of you who like using Twitter to get pointers to relevant information on a topic, but dislike all the off-topic discussions, Twitter Communities may just fit the bill.

Twitter Communities provide a dedicated place to connect, share, and discuss topics that you care the most about. These communities are moderated in order to keep the conversations useful and on topic.

Anyone on Twitter can see Tweets from a community, but only others within that community can participate in the discussion. There are at least two communities focused on product management.

These communities provide a great place to access content by product managers for product managers.

Follow:

The post Product Management Twitter Follows appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Product Management Communities

Kent J McDonald — Tue, 17 May 2022 17:09:20 +0000

One of the best aspects of the wider product management world is that practitioners are generally willing to share their experiences and answer each other’s questions.

To support that knowledge sharing, several product management communities have sprung up to provide a platform on which product people can meet, share ideas, ask questions, and even find their next job.

Generally speaking, those communities share resources such as articles, videos, and podcasts as well as provide community members with a chance to introduce themselves, ask questions, and share their experiences.

Here’s a survey of the most active communities in the product management world, most of which cover all aspects of product management, although there are some that focus on a specific aspect.

Most of these communities offer the opportunity to join for free, so we encourage you to check them out and join in on the product conversations.

Product Collective

We’re probably biased, but we think that the Product Collective community of over 30,000 product people is a great place to connect with other product people to share ideas, ask questions, and hear about the latest product management thinking.

One of the things you get access to when you join the Product Collective is the private Slack community. A nice thing about the Slack community is that there is a manageable number of channels (less than 10), so it’s easy to keep up with the various conversations going on in the community.

You’ll also get the Product Collective’s weekly newsletter, invitations to live video interviews with renowned product leaders, and access to a dedicated job board. Additionally, you’ll be the first to hear updates on INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Join the community, here.

Product-Led

Whether you’re just starting to learn more about product-led growth or are an expert, you’ll meet world-class SaaS operators that you can learn from if you’re a part of this community.

Product-Led is best known for its certificate-granting training programs, but there are all sorts of other resources—including its Slack community, podcast, newsletter, blog, and more.

Whether you’re taking part in focused training or simply learning from its ongoing resources, Product-Led is a great place to brush up on product-led growth, product- led onboarding, and more.

Join the community, here.

Mind the Product

Mind the Product offers a couple of different community options.

There’s the free Slack community for anyone who cares about building products that people love. This Slack community offers a chance to be part of a large worldwide community as well as innumerable small local- and topic-specific discussions. It’s also a great place to find out about activities in local product tank groups.

There’s also the paid Prioritised membership that offers a members-only set of forums, along with access to premium content, videos, AMAs with top product leaders, and discounts to Mind the Product events.

Join the community, here.

Product Manager HQ

Product Manager HQ offers training and resources to help people get into and succeed in their product management career.

When you join their community for a small one-time fee, you’ll get access to their active Slack channel, which includes several channels focused on specific topics and focused geographic areas. Given its focus on education, this is a great community for people who are interested in becoming a product manager or getting started on their product management journey.

You’ll also receive their bonus 140+ page guide to breaking into product management.

Join the community, here.

Creative Product Managers

If your preferred social network is LinkedIn, and you are looking for a private community focused on product management, you may want to check out the Creative Product Managers LinkedIn group.

The group is free to join, and it’s monitored and moderated so that you can be assured that all the conversations will be product-management-related. And since there are 85,000+ members, rest assured that there will be a wide range of experiences and perspectives that you can learn from.

Join the community, here.

Product Coalition

Product Coalition is an online product management publication that features a wealth of articles published by practicing product managers and product leaders.

The content is free to read and continues to be extremely helpful. If you would like to contribute content and engage in conversations with other contributors, you can get one of Product Coalition’s two memberships.

The Lite membership gives you access to Product Coalition’s Slack workspace so that you can converse with the other contributors as well as have the ability to submit articles for publishing and access to Product Coalition’s set of online courses.

And if you’d like to really ramp up your involvement, Product Coalition’s pro membership gives you the opportunity to record podcasts, get access to a 16-week mentoring program, and join a private WhatsApp group.

Join the community, here.

Women in Product

Women in Product provides women with equal access and representation in product management careers. The organization provides opportunities for women to get together with people close to them at one of the 25+ geographic chapters as well as on a broader scale in their Facebook community.

The community also offers member-curated resources, an annual conference, a newsletter, and a podcast.

The Women in Product community is a great place to connect, build skills, and share your knowledge with other women in product management.

Join the community, here.

Product-Led Alliance

Most of the communities that we’ve mentioned cover product management in general. There are also some active communities that focus on a specific aspect of product management. One good example is Product-Led Alliance’s Slack community, which focuses on product-led growth.

This community brings people from around the world who are all interested in product- led growth to share helpful resources, raise questions, and post jobs focused on growth. You can even find out about conferences, webinars, and virtual sessions focused on all things product-led growth.

Join the community, here.

Continuous Discovery Habits Membership Community

Teresa Torres is a big believer in practicing what she preaches. When she considered the best ways to reach her goal of increasing the number of product trios who adopt a continuous cadence to their discovery work, she realized that a membership community was one way to accomplish that.

So, she established the Continuous Discovery Habits (CDH) Membership Community to reach more people who wanted to learn and practice continuous discovery.

When you join the CDH Membership Community, you get access to a Slack workspace, where Teresa actively answers members’ questions. She also hosts bi-weekly calls that give members a chance to take a deeper dive into their challenges. The membership community also gives people the opportunity to participate in monthly book club discussions.

This community mixes the opportunity to interact with other product people, designers, and engineers, as well as receive ongoing product discovery coaching.

Join the community, here.

The post Product Management Communities appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Skills Necessary To Be An Effective Product Manager

Kent J McDonald — Fri, 13 May 2022 17:42:38 +0000

If you were to talk to a group of practicing product managers and product leaders about the skills that they have found to be the most important, you’ll get a variety of answers.

The variety most likely comes from the company that they’re working for and the type of product that they’re working on (something we explore in the section on Product Management in Different Contexts).

You’ll also likely hear some common threads.

Most product managers didn’t have a clear idea of the skills that they needed when they went into product management.

Many product managers learned what skills were important as a result of their experiences of actually doing the job. And what they found out is that there is a wide range of skills that you need beyond being at the intersection of business, design, and tech.

Fortunately, product managers by nature enjoy sharing what they have learned in the hopes of giving people who come after them a leg up on their journey to becoming effective product people.

Here is a collection of resources on the skills that you need to be an effective product manager, including some personal experiences and advice on how you can pick these skills up.

What It Takes To Become A Great Product Manager

When you determine if an aspiring product manager will be successful in that role, it’s helpful to evaluate core competencies, emotional intelligence (EQ), and company fit.

Julia Austin, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and advisor to several early-stage companies, explains that the best product managers have mastered the core competencies, have a high EQ, and work for the right company for them.

To determine if you’re working for the right company for you, consider the level of technical skill that your company requires, its philosophy of the product manager role, the stage of the company, and the relationship you’ll have with senior management.

Read on, here.

Essential Product Manager Skills

When Josh Fechter—Co-Founder of Product Manager HQ, Founder of Technical Writer HQ, and Founder and Head of Product of Squibler—first started in product management, he wasn’t sure what product manager skills he needed to contribute tangible value to the team. As he gained experience in a variety of product management roles, he learned quite a bit about which skills are important.

From that experience, Josh synthesized the top 10 skills you should develop to be a great product manager:

Outstanding communication skills
Basic technical expertise
Deep business skills
Research abilities
Analytical skills
Interpersonal abilities
Marketing and sales abilities
Delegation skills
Strategic thinking
Prioritization skills

Read on, here.

Top Product Management Skills That Companies Look For

Product managers are the jack of all trades within their organization.

Known for behind-the-scenes planning and strategy work, product managers are involved in every step of the product cycle. They are experts in the marketplace, their company, their customers and, of course, their product.

Given their extensive reach, successful product managers must possess vast yet specific skill sets.

Mark Silver, Product Manager at Walkmeinc, suggests that the most important product management skills can be categorized as follows:

Strategic planning skills
Ability to predict what’s next
Evidence-based decision-making
Product expertise

Read on, here.

20 Crucial Product Management Skills

The first step to growing as a product manager is understanding the skills required and what “great” looks like for each of these skills. Then, you can take stock of the current level in each of these skills and agree on appropriate development plans.

Different product managers certainly have different strengths, and different environments require different profiles of product managers. In general, it’s worth noting that product management is a role with a generalist profile. Product managers are expected to fill any gaps not filled by other team members. For that reason, product managers can’t afford to be really weak in any of the skills.

Jens-Fabian Goetzmann, Head of Product at RevenueCat, came up with a comprehensive (but reasonably concise) list of key product management skills. These skills fall into five categories of four skills each:

Foundational “human” skills
Domain skills
Discovery skills
Execution skills
Leadership skills

Read on, here.

Product Manager Skills By Seniority Level—a Deep Breakdown

People have frequently asked Brent Tworetzky, Chief Operating Officer at Parsley Health, what product management skills to expect at different product manager levels.

When he was a product leader at XO Group, Brent and his team broke down product manager skill areas into more granular measurable skills. Those skill areas are:

Strategic thinking
Communication
Collaboration
Technicals
Details and quality
User science and empathy
Management

They used those explicit skills to interview and hire, and to help their people grow in their careers through individual development plans. Brent shared XO Group’s product manager career paths for an individual contributor and manager, as well as the skill expectations for each step on those career paths.

Read on, here.

Top 10 Product Manager Skills To Boost Your Resume

Product managers need to constantly upgrade their product management skills to stay competitive when job searching or when looking to move up within their organization, company, or startup.

A successful PM is always interested in learning about new technologies or agile methodologies that could help them be more effective product and people managers, or even better teammates or coworkers.

With that in mind, Ben Aston, an online media entrepreneur and Founder of Black + White Zebra, identified the top skills that employers are looking for in their product management roles.

If you’re just getting into product management, you can use this list as a checkpoint to brush up on your skills before looking for product management jobs.

Read on, here.

How To Assess Product Management Skills And Competencies

Product management is a relatively new discipline, and the role is subject to many interpretations. It can prove incredibly difficult to pin down the behaviors, mindsets, and skills that product managers need to demonstrate in their work.

As a result, product managers are often being described as a T-shaped person with deep technical domain knowledge and broad business skills, or a hybrid of technologist, business analyst, and UX designer. Unfortunately, neither description provides much guidance as to what exactly product managers are supposed to do to be successful in their day-to-day job.

Without knowing which skills are essential to being a product manager, how can you improve performance and become good at what you do? To address the product management talent dilemma, you must first have a clear understanding of the core competencies required to perform the role.

Eleanor Kolossovski, a product strategist and marketer, provides three useful tools for systematically assessing product management skills and competencies. Eleanor briefly describes each framework and shows how to use it in practice.

Read on, here.

How Arpit Rai Improves His Product Management Skills

Before Arpit Rai, Director of Product Management at ThoughtSpot, started his career in product management, he often wondered about the core skills required to be an effective product manager.

After working on various products, Arpit identified the following fundamental skills that make you an effective product manager:

Strategy and big-picture thinking
Product sense
Structuring problems and analytics
Soft skills and communication
Attention to detail
Project execution

Arpit developed some of these skills based on his educational background in engineering and prior professional experience in sales. He had to spend considerable time on some of the other skills in order to understand them and get better at them.

In this article, Arpit discusses what he has done (and continues to do) to get better at each of these skills.

Read on, here.

Taking A Career Sabbatical To Learn New Product Management Skills

There is an acknowledgement these days that careers are not what they used to be. Robert Drury is the Founder of GettingStartedInProduct.com. His father spent more than 30 years working in the frozen food industry, but these days, 30 years in one industry seems just beyond us.

Portfolio careers and career pivots are now becoming the norm, but even that might seem beyond us when we’re seemingly tied to our salary in order to pay for crazy rents and high costs of living.

Do you like the idea of working in product management, but you’re not sure, and you can’t find the time to figure it out? Robert suggests the answer to your problem might be a sabbatical from work. He explains what a sabbatical is and how you can use it to pick up new product management skills.

Read on, here.

Product Management Skills No One Talks About

When Taruna Manchanda, Product Manager at LinkedIn, started in product management, the common guidance was that product managers sit at the intersection of tech, design, and business.

After spending close to four years in the product management industry, building and collaborating on some super successful products with some of the brightest minds in the country, Taruna learned that product management is much more than business, design, and tech.

Taruna learned a great deal from those experiences, including insight into some skills that don’t necessarily fit into the category of tech design and business. She shared seven of her lessons learned that point to the need for skills that you don’t always hear about.

Read on, here.

The post Skills Necessary To Be An Effective Product Manager appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Product Vision And Strategy

Kent J McDonald — Thu, 12 May 2022 17:04:46 +0000

If you were to rank the concepts that produce the most “Princess Bride moments” (“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”), two concepts that would show up close to the top are product vision and product strategy.

It seems as though everyone agrees that you need to have a product vision and a product strategy. But when you ask what those concepts mean, the answers become a little less definitive and a bit more handwavy.

Ultimately, your product teams need to know where your product is heading. That’s your product vision. And you need to have some idea about how you’re going to get there, at least a starting point. That’s your product strategy.

If those descriptions seem a bit high-level, take a look at these resources that take a deeper dive into both concepts and how they work together.

Hopefully, after you’re done, the thought of not having a clear product vision and product strategy will be inconceivable.

How To Define A Product Vision (With Examples)

There’s an assumption that the “average” person has about 10 ideas in their life that could/would change the world. Very successful people have about 15–20 of these ideas.

How do you really know that an idea could become a life-changing billion-dollar product or service?

Christian Strunk, a product coach and consultant, doesn’t have the answer to that question. He does know that continuous product discovery and a clear product vision helped many successful companies to get there.

In this article, Christian explains how to define a product vision. He breaks it all down into simple segments from the definition to the creation process, underlined with real-world examples.

Read on, here.

8 Tips For Creating A Compelling Product Vision

Creating and managing a successful product requires a lot of time and energy. In order to be fully committed, you have to be convinced that what you are doing is right and have a clear vision of where to take your product.

Roman Pichler, product management trainer and author, shares eight tips to help you create an effective product vision that inspires your development team and your stakeholders.

Read on, here.

SVPG’s Views On Product Vision

Marty Cagan, product consultant and Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group, explains that the product vision is one of the most important and highest-leverage tools for tech-powered product companies, especially for those trying to do product at scale. He also notes that there are some widely held misconceptions about product vision.

In this pair of posts, Marty explains his view on product vision by addressing those misconceptions and answering some frequent questions that he’s received about product vision.

The general gist of these posts is that a product vision acts as a “north star” that every product team in an organization can use to understand how their work contributes to the larger whole.

Read on, here: Product vision versus mission | Product vision FAQ

Every Product Needs A North Star

The product north star is easily the most powerful and misunderstood product strategy framework in use today.

A north star metric is the key measure of success for the product team in a company. It defines the relationship between the customer problems that the product team is trying to solve and the revenue that the business aims to generate by doing so.

Sandhya Hegde, Director of Product at Amplitude Analytics, put together this deep dive on the north star metric. She intended it to serve as a guide to product leaders and product managers on why the north star matters, how to define it, and how to use it to drive your long-term product strategy and growth.

Read on, here.

How To Define Your Product Strategy

Gib Biddle, former VP/CPO at Netflix/Chegg, had some experiences in his career as a product leader that reinforced the value of strategic thinking for him.

Reflecting on those experiences led Gib to shift his focus from satisfying customers to delighting them. He learned about the balancing act of delight and margin, and what makes products hard to copy.

He also learned to articulate a product strategy as a set of hypotheses for how to delight customers in hard-to-copy, margin-enhancing ways.

He found that crisp execution and high-cadence experimentation are critical, but having a clear product strategy supercharges your efforts. Strategic thinking enables you to think ahead, to effectively “skip quarters,” and to build enduring value.

To help others pick up his approach to strategic thinking, Gib crafted a series of short essays that provide a step-by-step approach to defining your product strategy.

Read on, here.

8 Product Strategies That Will Inspire Your Roadmap

The journey of every great product starts with a strategy. As far as product management is concerned, it’s mostly about creating a winning product strategy, followed by flawless execution. By clearly defining goals and pinpointing where they need to end up, product managers lead their teams toward success.

That can be easier said than done. Depending on the industry, the region you’re in, and many other factors, coming up with a new strategy from scratch isn’t always easy. Fortunately, in most cases, you can iterate existing strategies because “they’ve always worked.”

If you’re a product manager looking for inspiration to ignite the product roadmap for your idea, keep reading. Josh Fecter, business strategy consultant and Founder of The Product Company, provides a quick refresher on the concept and purpose of product strategies, and shows examples of the most popular types of product strategies.

Read on, here.

Product Strategy Template: Focus Your Efforts With These 3 Steps

Building and executing a product strategy is difficult, to say the least. Forty-five percent of all products fail to launch on time, while 20% of that number fails to meet internal targets.

The key to overcoming those statistics is the expectations that your team places upon your product strategy itself. Ask yourself: “What are the intangible outcomes we’ll strive for by implementing this strategy?”

An effective product strategy template will keep you focused on the fundamentals and not bogged down in unnecessary particulars. It should prompt you to plot where your product will deliver value, how it will grow, and what it has to do to stand out from the pack.

If you’re looking for a ready-made template to download and get working on straight away, the folks at Amplitude put together a worksheet that you can use as a starting point. They also explain how to shape your product strategy template to give your team the mixture of discipline and freedom you need to build great products.

Read on, here.

Avoid The Strategy Templates Myth. Do This Instead.

Then again, not everyone is a believer in product strategy templates or reusing product strategy from other organizations.

Nacho Bassino, Director of Product at XING, states that in theory, using a template helps you know what sections to pay attention to, confirm how it should look, and avoid missing any significant part. It should also give you a solid argument to share with peers and stakeholders when they ask why you describe your strategy in this particular format.

Nacho then points out that in practice, he’s never seen a good strategy emerge from a template. He explains why this is the case and suggests what he thinks you should do instead.

Read on, here.

The Product Strategy Stack

The word “strategy” has been stretched to a point where it is almost devoid of meaning. Too often, the terms “vision,” “mission,” “strategy,” “goals,” and “roadmap” get conflated into a jumbled mess—leaving product leaders without the context that they need to focus their work on the difficult task of moving the company forward.

Sometimes, this lack of clarity is apparent. Product teams may know that they don’t have a clear-enough understanding of the strategy. More often, the lack of clarity manifests in hard-to-diagnose ways. For example, product teams may struggle to answer prioritization questions.

Difficulty in prioritizing is often a strategy issue, not an execution issue. It is impossible to make rigorous prioritization decisions when the guidance on how to do so is missing, unclear, or disconnected from what you are trying to do.

In order to address issues, you can’t think about “strategy” as some amorphous, all-encompassing concept. Instead, Zainab Gadiyali, Operator-in-Residence at Reforge, and Ravi Mehta, Reforge Partner, suggest the product strategy stack as a way of thinking about the relationship between mission, strategy, roadmap, and goals as a stack of distinct concepts.

Read on, here.

What Is Good Product Strategy?

Most companies fall into the trap of thinking about product strategy as a plan to build certain features and capabilities. We often say that our product strategies are things like:

“To create a platform that allows music producers to upload and share their music.”
“To create a backend system that will allow the sales team to manage their leads.”
“To create a front of the funnel website that markets to our target users and converts them.”

This isn’t a strategy; this is a plan. When you treat a product strategy like a plan, it will almost always fail. Plans do not account for uncertainty or change. They give you a false sense of security.

You need to switch from thinking about product strategy as something that is dictated from top to bottom to thinking about it as something that is uncovered as you learn what will help you achieve your objectives.

Melissa Perri, CEO and Founder of ProdUXLabs, explains that product strategy is a system of achievable goals and visions that work together to align your product team around desirable outcomes for both your business and your customers.

Product strategy emerges from experimentation toward a goal. Those KPIs, OKRs, and other metrics that you are setting for your teams are part of the product strategy. But, they cannot create a successful strategy on their own.

Read on, here.

The post Product Vision And Strategy appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Product Management Career Ladders

Kent J McDonald — Tue, 10 May 2022 17:03:50 +0000

There are a variety of reasons why people want to become product managers. One common reason is a desire for growth. That could mean growth in knowledge, growth in skills, growth in responsibilities and, let’s face it, growth in a paycheck.

Chances are, you won’t be able to experience that growth if you stay in the same role year after year. That’s where the product management career ladder comes into play.

The general product management career ladder explains the different roles that fall under the product management umbrella that require increased skills and responsibilities and offer increased compensation.

However, there are different views on what a proper product management career ladder looks like and the proper way to climb one. Here’s a collection of resources that explore what good career ladders should have, how you can best navigate them, and some examples of how some companies have crafted their product management career ladder.

How To Climb The Product Management Ladder

Ori Yitzhaki started practicing product management in 2007. Along the way, he’s gained experience in working across four different industries, as well as in a number of very successful corporations and very successful startups that went public.

Ori wrote a series of blog posts that provide his perspective on climbing the product management career ladder. The posts are based on his experience with starting in a non-product position and gradually moving up to a VP of product management role.

A key point in these posts is that there are many possible, successful routes to the top like there are on any mountain climb. Don’t let anyone—including Ori—tell you that there is only one way to get there.

Read on, here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Product Management Careers: Levels, Career Growth, And Promotions

Product managers’ hunger for career growth needs a great department career pathing and promotion system. Without such support, they can get restless, feel undervalued, and look for a different company where they can experience their desired growth.

Career pathing considers roles (titles, responsibilities, and compensation) and how that path will grow over time. Brent Tworetzky, Chief Operating Officer at Parsley Health and former product leader, explains the three key principles for a clear, results-based approach to product management career pathing and promotion: objectivity, transparency, and support.

Read on, here.

The Product Leadership Career Ladder

In addition to his formal coaching of product leaders (directors, VPs, and CPOs who directly manage teams of product managers), Rich Mironov talks with many senior individual contributors about the risks and challenges of moving “up the ladder” into product leadership roles.

To ensure that he was addressing the key questions that people have about moving into product leadership roles, he surveyed a group of senior product managers, capturing their top questions and concerns about getting promoted.

A majority of the responses fell into these three categories, for which he provided his thoughts:

What does a product leader actually do?

Concern about giving up direct product management work and responsibilities
How to move up into a director role or signal interest

Read on, here.

Non-linear Careers Are The Norm, So Embrace Them

The common perception of a product management career ladder is that it forms a straight line up the ranks at your company. Robert Drury, Product Manager at Watch-Finder.com and Founder of GettingStartedInProduct.com, suggests that taking a winding road might just make you a better product manager than climbing a ladder.

He’s probably influenced by his own career, which has included stints as a professional soccer player, cinema manager, recruitment consultant, and project manager before moving into product management.

Robert explains how most of these stops influenced his career and describes how a non-linear career path can prepare you to be a better product manager and fit your current situation so that you can balance your professional and personal life.

Read on, here.

Define Your Own Product Management Career Path

Many companies provide a single career path up the proverbial corporate ladder, where the only way to get ahead is by moving up in title, rung by rung.

For most of her career, Joni Hoadley, a product management coach and consultant, worked at startups that had single-track product management career paths. Most of these companies were small enough that she could manage small teams while being hands-on, defining products, and collaborating with designers and engineers to bring those products to life.

On two different occasions, she had to choose between being a people manager or an individual contributor. She shared her experiences in the hope that they can help deal with similar decisions.

Read on, here.

It’s Time To Fight For A Dual Product Management Career Path

Product management has largely been seen as an intermediate step on a route to something loftier, which usually means managing people more so than managing products.

But what if you really love being a product manager and want to do more and better product work? Or what if you don’t define your life by your job and want to have a life outside of work?

Ken Norton, advisor and coach to product managers and formerly a Product Leader at Google, argues that companies should embrace multitrack job ladders for product managers who prefer product leadership to people management. This article is a follow-up to an earlier article in which Ken described what a dual-track product management career ladder might look like.

Read on, here.

Product Management Career Ladders At 8 Top Technology Firms

Sachin Rekhi, Founder & CEO at Notejoy, often mentors product managers on the career paths available to them within the profession. To help with his mentoring, Sachin shared the career ladders for product managers at eight top technology firms, as well as some of the key dimensions upon which advancement in the profession occurs.

The technology firms that Sachin showcases all have hundreds of product managers within their organization and have invested in career ladders for their respective product organizations.

Read on, here.

Define Your Own Product Management Career Path

The Importance of a Clear Career Path for Product Managers

Product management is an elusive craft. We all think we know what we’re talking about, but when it comes down to it, the difference between great, good, and not quite good enough can be pretty slippery.

Jane Honey (Senior Director of Product at Intercom) and Brian Donohue (Senior Director of Product Management at Intercom) found that career ladders can bring clarity in the form of role expectations and what you need to do to get a promotion; and serve as the basis of fair, consistent performance reviews.

Jane and Brian also found that career ladders can be difficult to write, so they shared their ladder to act as inspiration when considering what the PM career ladder should look like in your own organization.

Read on, here.

The Product Manager Role At Gitlab

GitLab is one of the rare companies that provides open access to their employee handbook. Of particular interest for our resource guide, that includes a look at their product management organizational structure and how it relates to the general organizational structure for the entire company.

These pages include a look at the various roles in the product management organizational structure, the job requirements and expectations for each, and advice on how to move from one role to the next.

While this resource is most useful for product people who work at GitLab (or who would like to work there), it also provides some deep insight into how one company structures their product management organization. You may find that information a helpful example that you can refer to when structuring your own product organization.

Read on, here.

Product Team Levels At Wise

The folks at Wise use career maps to map out the different levels within a team. Career maps give clarity on what they expect at each level and help their product people know how they can progress in their team. The career maps also help product leaders at Wise evaluate impact and pay their people consistently and fairly.

When you select a category and a career level (1 is a product manager; 5 is a senior product director / product lead), you can see the expectations and salary range for that level.

This resource is really helpful if you’re considering a job at Wise, but it also provides some good insight into the various career levels in Wise’s product organization. It also provides an example of how expectations can expand from one career level to the next.

Read on, here.

The post Product Management Career Ladders appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.