Beginners’ Guide to Product Management: Directory of Resources
Learning by Doing, and Learning before Doing
As an aspiring Product Manager, it can be hard to find the right resources to learn about the product management role from scratch, by yourself. However, there are some. great people out there who have worked extremely hard in order to help out passionate and aspiring PMs (like you!) out.
In my last post, I recommended that before beginning the journey to product management, step 0 is to learn about it from a distance and find out whether it is really for you. Side note, there is no shame in quitting or deciding that PM not for you — but, by learning about it from a distance instead of by jumping into it you save yourself months and years of effort. And btw, no knowledge is wasted knowledge! So everything you learn from these resources will be useful if not a product manager, then maybe in some other leadership, managerial, entrepreneurial, or technical role!
I will keep this post to the point and avoid going into giving reviews for each because the way I see it — reviews often add bias. I don’t want you to see a certain book, podcast, or any other resources through my lenses. I hope you are able to form your own opinions and draw out your unique insights from the resources!
P.S: That being said as I indicated before — I will soon begin summarizing books through these maps, so hang on tight!
Directory of Resources
Step 0
- Build a spreadsheet with the main topics above as ‘Tabs’
- Add the recommended resources and their URLs as Rows/ Columns.
- Include a column ‘Notes’ for each resource
- Regularly update the spreadsheet with notes from others
Books for an Introduction to Product Management
Books are a great way to indulge yourself in a PMs mindset. I have included two of my favorite self-help books (Grit and Beyond Order) here as well, which helped me gain the spirit of a product manager. I sincerely believe that we are the best versions of anything (whether a product manager or any other role) when we truly work on ourselves.
- The Product Book by Product School
- The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen
- Product Management for Dummies
- Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumlet
- The Art of Strategy by Dixit Nalebuff
- The Art of Product Management: Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator by Rich Mironov
- Learning to Think Strategically
- Beyond Order by Jordan B. Peterson
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- Crossing the Chasm
Best Product Management Communities
Having a community of like-minded and inspired individuals will not only help you learn more but it will push you to look at things differently — from perspectives that you would have not considered otherwise. A strong community can be the key to your success because this is where you will find your tribe of product management friends, mentors, and potential employers!
- Product Manager HQ
- Product School
- Mind The Product
- The Product Coalition
- Women In Product
- Product Buds
- Creative Product Managers
Best Podcasts for Beginner Product Managers
I love going for morning runs! And, I always need someone to accompany me on my runs — so why not learn on the go? Podcasts are a great way to learn quickly and you don’t need to focus all of your attention on them. If you don’t like reading books and think they take too much time up, podcasts are for you because you get to pick which chapter (episode) to skip and which one to listen to. Podcasts are truly picking your own adventure and I love them!
- This is Product Management
- 100 Product Managers Podcast
- Unique U Podcast
- Product to Product
- How I Built This
- Tim Ferris Podcast
- Product Talk
Inspire-ers
Now, I totally sneaked this one in the ‘Directory of Resources’ because someone who inspires you to be a product manager is truly a gem of a resource! The way I went about finding my gems was by dividing them up into the following three categories:
- Industry-based: Which industries interest you? FinTech? HealthTeach? Jot down a list of the top 3 industries of your interest and find product managers at three types of companies in those industries:
- Startup: A lowkey startup
- Popular: A big popular company
- Cool: A company you simply find ‘cool’
- Product-based: This is a backward approach to the above category — find PMs in the companies whose product strategies and positioning genuinely make you curious and inspire you to learn more!
- Role-based: I haven’t said this before but you might already know this — product management is a loosely defined role and it can differ vastly from company to company and even from team to team! So, within those companies and industries — approach different PMs on different teams because it will give you an insight into the variety and scope of roles that PMs take onto.
Best Introduction to Product Management Courses
I found this really cool blog that has a summary of some of the best product management courses, and I don’t think I can do a better job at curating a list of courses than that post does! So here’s a link to it, check out the top courses for product management
Well, that’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed this post and found value in it. If not, please share it with someone who you think could use it. I would love to hear your feedback, please leave a comment down below.
See you on the next map!
P.S: I will be doing a post on how to hold informational interviews with your list of ‘Inspire-ers’ to learn more about their roles as a Product Manager. Stay tuned to learn more!
