Beginner’s Guide: Your Product Management Roadmap

How To Prioritize and Ensure Your Success in Product Management

The path to product management seems to get more and more complicated as the field gains interest from tech and business enthusiasts from all fields. How do you ensure that you stand out? Or, better yet how do you ensure product management is the one for you and it stands out to you?

This is my first post on here, and I want to keep these posts succinct — short, to the point, and quick to read so that you get the most out of it in the least amount of time. This is a Product Managers way — succinct communication. Additionally, the posts will be supported by mind-blowing mind maps to capture all the information in a neat visual representation because Product Managers are visual thinkers — and if you are a product manager at heart, these mind maps are for you!

Now, let’s get into the ‘Before Product Management’ phase. The before phase comes before you start waking up at 5 am to read ‘Cracking the PM interview’ every single day, before you start doing mock interviews with your product community, and before you tailor your resume to Product Management.

Know Your WHY

Before you start exploring the field of product management, it is crucial (more crucial than I can emphasize or express in words) to know why you are interested in product management. Is it because you think that coding is not for you? (Example of weak why) Or, is it because you enjoy strategic thinking and love getting involved with every step of the product?

1. Understand Why PM

• Reach out to your PM network and learn their whys
• Ensure your why is strong enough to get you through any roadblocks, obstacles, and challenges on your path to product management.

2. Strong and Clear

• Your why should be deeply inwardly focused because it is YOURS.
• Write you why and connect it to your core values that product management elicits

Learning

Before you jump into applying and preparing, learning about product management from a distance can take you a long way. Not only will this help you determine what area, industry, and function of product management are you the most interested in — it is also a great way to ensure that it is the right role for you. And, for a product manager, learning never stops! Adopt a beginner’s mindset, and learn baby learn!

Collect resources for learning more about product management before you dive into the field thinking that

‘A PM is like a CEO of a product’

Directory of Resources:

A spreadsheet with the following tabs:

• Mentors
• Courses
• Books
• YouTube Videos
• We will be filling each tab with the resources! Stay tuned for the next mind map with the best Product Management resources

Community Involvement

You are the average of 5 people you hangout with — make it good!

In my journey to product management, one of my biggest supports and guiding lights was (and is) my community. Building a community will not only help you strengthen your product knowledge, but it will set you up for success.

1. Like-minded: Find friends and connections who are interested in product management and join product communities! (I will be posting a list of the best product communities to join soon) For now, focus on finding friends who are strategic thinkers, have an entrepreneurial mindset, or simply are just as interested in product management as you are! And if your current circle has none of those, you can always make new friends!
2. Honest companions: This group of people might not necessarily be interested in product management, but they are extremely interested in seeing you grow and achieve your dreams and goals. Your honest companions will help you identify your areas of strengths and weaknesses; this could be your best friends, family, or colleagues
3. Inspire-ers: My one mantra while using social media has been to replace competition/comparison/ jealousy with pure-hearted inspiration and motivation. Look through your current network or connect with people who truly inspire you to be a product manager, and learn exactly WHY they inspire you — because success can always be modeled!

Self Assessment

After you have formed your strong ‘why’ and learned about product management enough that you still want to continue exploring it — the next stage is to get raw and real with yourself through radical self-assessment.

1. Strength Directory: It is extremely important to know your strengths so that you can play by your strengths while preparing for your interviews and while you reshape your resume to target PM positions. This strength directory will also help you know which skills you wish to enhance during your work position.
2. On the other hand, list out your weaknesses and areas you would like to improve in. This will help you set goals for your job in the future.
3. Strength Matching: By now you have a good idea of the strengths and skills required for Product Management, and you know your own strengths well enough, to be honest with whether product management is the right fit for you or not.
4. Strength matching urges you to match your current skills with the ones required to be a product manager. This will help you know your ‘domain’ and identify which exact skills will make you an excellent PM!
5. The next two steps ‘Personal Voice’ and ‘Connection to Why’ will be by-products of the above two. The more intrinsic motivation and connection you have to the role — the easier it will get to find the right role for you!

Give It A Try

Now that you know that product management is the right fit for you and that you have the right skills required for it — the only thing left to do is to become a product manager. Of course, getting your dream position will require more devotion and planning but you can always try out what is it like to be a product manager to really be sure that it is going to worth all your time and effort!

Here a few approaches to giving product management a try without being a product manager:

1. Mentor: Find senior PMs or other PMs in your connection that inspires you and set up an information interview to learn more about product management and their day-to-day role. Learn as much as you can from the ones who are living your dream job and it might help you get a better idea of what product management is really like.
2. 30-day Pilot: A 30-day pilot is like that first episode for a ten season-long show, one that ensures that you are in it for the long run and one where you determine if you are actually interested in investing your time in it not because of the hype or because someone else told you to watch it.
3. For 30 days, step into the shoes of a product manager by looking at your favorite products from a product manager’s standpoint. Try to break down the strategy behind the product, and the different aspects that must have been considered while the product was created, think of market segments, customer needs, sales strategy, product positioning, brand alignment, cost modeling, and how the product fits into the company’s overall strategy. In these 30 days, find any online gigs, courses, or videos and completely submerge into the role — if it is fun and interesting — Violla!
4. The other ways to try your hand at product management is by finding short-term positions or simply offering your help as a volunteer to your companies of interest. The goal here is to get as much experience before getting your first real experience so that you are ready and you ensure that it is product management is the right for you.

Good luck with your journey to product management folks! Let me know your honest thoughts about these articles

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