The tried, tested & debated list of resources for the

busy Product Manager

As a product manager - you are the one who is going to lead the product from conception
to completion. More often than not, you are so swamped with your work that you can’t
keep in touch with current trends and industry best practices. We get it!

Through our journey of getting the product-market fit right, scaling the product, and
making it profitable - We have learnt A LOT! What you’ll find below is a list of resources
we had bookmarked, and kept referring to time and again!

There are podcasts, videos, essays, stories, interviews, books, tools, ask-me-anything
groups - everything that’s easy to access and refer to when the need arises!
To make it even simpler, we’ve organized them into sections, addressing each critical
facet of managing a product; namely,

Strategic Planning Execution Skill Development For

Product Managers
5 Subcategories 8 Subcategories 10 Subcategories
39 Articles 36 Articles 52 Articles

Bookmark them, read them, internalize them - This is your one-stop guide to being a
resourceful product manager!
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning, ideally, follows a top-down approach unifying overall company
objectives with the ones at the product level. It’s always better to know where you’d like to
go, before you start building your way to get there!
Strategic Planning
Product Management 101
If you’re just breaking into the job of managing a product, this list could pretty well be your
Bible!

• A Product Manager’s Job - Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock Partners. Previously Twitter, Facebook.

• Be a Great Product Leader - Adam Nash, EIR at Greylock Partners. Previously Wealthfront, LinkedIn, eBay, Apple.

• What distinguishes the top 1% of PMs from the rest - Ian McAllister, Director of Alexa International at Amazon.

• Let’s talk about Product Management - Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock Partners. Previously Twitter, Facebook.

• PM at Microsoft - Steven Sinofsky, Veteran Product Development Leader.

Strategic Planning
Product Management 101

• How to Hire a Product Manager - Ken Norton, Partner, GV (Google Ventures). Previously, Product Manager at
Google.

• Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager - Ben Horowitz, Co-founder and General Partner, Andreessen
Horowitz

• Great PMs don’t spend their time on solutions - Paul Adams, VP of Product, Intercom.

• The DNA of Product Management - Hunter Walk, Partner at Homebrew VC. Previously YouTube, Google, Second
Life.

• Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech’s Hottest Products - First Round Review.

• Lessons in product management with Intercom’s Colin Bentley and Brian Donohue - Intercom.
Strategic Planning
Product Vision & Strategy
The product vision represents the core essence of a product or a product line - it sets the
direction for where a product is headed, or the needs a product is expected to address.

• Complexity and Strategy - Terry Crowley on Hacker Noon.

• If your product is Great, it doesn’t need to be Good - Paul Buchheit, Creator of Gmail.

• All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces - Bill Gurley,
General Partner, Benchmark Capital. Previously GrubHub, NextDoor, OpenTable.

• Getting product strategy right - Des Traynor, Co-Founder & CEO, Intercom.

• How to Develop Your Product Strategy - This is Product Management.

Strategic Planning
Product Vision & Strategy

• [Talk] Value Proposition Design - Alexander Osterwalder, Lead Author, Business Model Generation.

• Blue Ocean Strategy - Summary by Allen Cheng, Co-founder, PrepScholar.

• Are You Solving the Right Problems? Harvard Business Review (HBR).

• Talk: Product strategy in 7 minutes - Des Traynor, Co-Founder & CEO, Intercom.

• Vision vs Strategy - Marty Cagan - Silicon Valley Product Group.

• [Talk] Job to be done - Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School.

• Know Your Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done” - Clayton Christensen, HBR

Strategic Planning
User Research
Building a deeper understanding of your users, their needs, motivations and how they
intend to use your product - that’s user research for you!

• A Practical Guide to User Needs - Julia Mitelman, Amazon Fashion.

• What is User Research - Timothy Embretson, Invision.

• How to choose the right UX metrics for your product - Kerry Rodden, Google, YouTube.

• Get the most out of your research with storytelling - Jillian Wells, Senior Product Researcher, Intercom.

• How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices - Steven Hoober, UX Matters.

• How to Design Your Customer Validation to Maximize Product/Market Fit - Sachin Rekhi, Notejoy.
Strategic Planning
Competitor Research
As a product manager, you are often advised to focus purely on the customer. But, a smart
product manager will always keep an eye on the competitor!

• Doing a competitive analysis - Open Classrooms.

• Real competitive analysis is about learning to love your competitor - Chris Butler, Director of AI at Philosophie NYC.
Strategic Planning
Customer Journey
A customer journey map, in plain simple words, helps you build a better product. It is a
graphic or narrative representation of the customer’s relationship with a company, product
or service.

• Customer Journey Mapping: Everything You Need to Know - SailThru.

• How to Create a Customer Journey Map - UX Mastery.

• A Step By Step Guide To Building Customer Journey Maps - ConversionXL (CXL).

• Journey Mapping Powers Better Design Thinking - Jay Melone, Invision.

• How to Run an Empathy & User Journey Mapping Workshop - Harry Brignull, Head of UX, Smart Pension.
Previously Spotify and Clearleft.
Execution
This next phase is all about getting your product built, tested and delivered to the market!
As a product manager, this is when you roll up your sleeves and get the product out there
where it needs to be.
Execution
Product Design
Product design involves owning the entire process of sketching, collaborating, designing,
writing CSS rules and structuring everything in a proper manner - something developers
can integrate into their workflow without compromising on the design quality.

• Design Thinking 101 - Sarah Gibbons, Nielsen Norman Group.

• Product Designers: Artists of the Intangible - Chrys Bader.

• Invisible design: why is less more? - Intercom.

• Crafting The First Mile Of Product - Scott Belsky, Founder, Behance.

Execution
Wireframing & Specs
A wireframe is a static, low-fidelity representation of different layouts that form a product -
a visual representation of an interface, to communicate the structure, content and
functionality.

• UX Crash Course: 31 Fundamentals - Joel Marsh, The Hipper Element.

• Wireframing for UX: What it is and how to get better at it - Ben Rowe, UX Mastery.

• How to get value from wireframes - Dustin Senos, Former Head of Design, Medium.

• Working Backwards - Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com.

Execution
Roadmapping
A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary of the vision and direction of your
product offering over time.

• Before You Plan Your Product Roadmap - Des Traynor, Co-Founder & CEO, Intercom.

• The 666 Roadmap - Paul Adams, VP of Product, Intercom.

• Guide To Product Planning: Three Feature Buckets - Adam Nash, EIR at Greylock Partners.

• How To Build A Product Roadmap Everyone Understands - Andrea Saez, ProdPad.

• This Product Prioritization System Nabbed Pandora 70 Million Monthly Users with Just 40 Engineers - Tom Conrad,
Pandora CTO.

• Themes: A Small Change To Product Roadmaps With Large Effects - Jared M. Spool, Founder of @UIE.
Execution
Sprint Planning
A sprint is a set period of time during which specific work has to be completed and made
ready for review. Each sprint begins with a planning meeting between the product owner
(manager) and the development team.

• 20 Product Prioritization Techniques - Folding Burritos.

• The Next Feature Fallacy - Andrew Chen, General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz.

• The Time Value Of Shipping - The Black Box of Product Management.

• Babe Ruth And Feature Lists - Why Prioritized Feature Lists Can Be Poisonous - GV Library.
Execution
Prototyping
Prototyping helps reduce business risk, communicate and demonstrate the solution to the
business, obtain customer feedback and gain insights into whether the product is doing its
job!

• Wireframing, Prototyping, Mockuping - What’s The Difference? - Marcin Treder, CEO, UXPin.

• What Is A Prototype: A Guide To Functional UX - Jerry Cao, UXPin.

• 6 Steps To Superior Product Prototyping: Lessons From An Apple And Oculus Engineer - Caitlin Kalinowski, First
Round Review.

• Designing Interactive Experiences - The ‘What, When and How’ Of Interactive Prototyping - Eder Rengifo, Product
Designer, Able.
Execution
Product Development
This is the phase where everything comes together - product design, wireframing, specs,
roadmapping, prototyping and all the steps that lead to the creation of the final product!

• Speed As A Habit - Dave Girouard, CEO, Upstart.

• Peacetime PM/Wartime PM - Noah Weiss, Head of Search, Learning, Intelligence, Slack.

• Metrics VS Experience - Julie Zhou, Product Design VP, Facebook.

• Putting On The Shipping Goggles - Jason Fried, Co-founder, Basecamp.

• The Right Way To Ship Software - Jocelyn Goldfein, Former Engineering Executive, Facebook and VMware.

• Amazon’s Friction-Killing Tactics To Make Products More Seamless - First Round Review.
Execution
Feedback Loop
A ‘continuous’ customer feedback loop designed well, maximises the benefits of gathering,
recording and synthesizing feedback!

• What You Can Do To Simplify Your Products - Ameet Ranadive, Entrepreneur.

• Designing Your Product’s Continuous Feedback Loop - Sachin Rekhi, Notejoy.

• A Minimum Viable Product Is Not A Product, It’s A Process - Yevgeniy Brikman, Y Combinator.

• Slack’s First Product Manager On How To Make A Firehose Of Feedback Useful - Kenneth Berger, Slack, First Round
Review.
Execution
Data & Analytics
Product management is data-driven! Analytics helps understand user behaviour, is a great
tool to measure the progress of a product, to check if the product is viable, make informed
product decisions

• Everything A Product Manager Needs To Know About Analytics - Mind The Product.

• The Only Metric That Matters - Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock Partners. Previously Twitter, Facebook.

• Lean Analytics - Hiten Shah, Co-founder, Kissmetrics.

• Lean Analytics - A Workshop By Google Ventures - Alistair Croll.

Skill Development For Product Managers
Product management is an ongoing process - there is always room for innovation, and
improvement! Product managers can learn a lot simply by observing their contemporaries,
understanding the market, analysing the best practices of their competition, and upgrading
their functional knowledge.
Skill Development For Product Managers
Collaboration
One of the key features of a successful product manager - the ability to work in a
collaborative way across different teams and departments to bring in new products, and
increase the profitability of existing products!

• How To Work With Engineers - A Cheat Sheet For Designers - Julie Zhou, Product Design VP, Facebook

• Top Hacks From A PM Behind Two Of Tech’s Hottest Products - First Round Review.

• The Job Of Leadership - Ev Williams, CEO, Medium.

• How To Present Designs - Julie Zhou, Product Design VP, Facebook.

Skill Development For Product Managers
Communication
As a product manager, most of your time will be spent communicating ideas, plans, tasks,
designs, etc.! There’ll be mails, presentations, specs and bug tickets!

• Bad Managers Talk, Good Managers Write - I Done This Blog.

• Product Management Communication Hacks - Invision.

• A Product Manager’s Guide To Strong Team Communication - Mind The Product.

• How To Communicate Your Roadmap To Stakeholders - Product Plan.

Skill Development For Product Managers
Growth
Growth is a mindset. And every product manager is a growth product manager.

• How To Avoid Delusional Thinking In Start-up Growth Strategy - Aaron Schildkrout, Co-Founder, HowAboutWe.

• The Product Death Cycle - Why It Happens And How To Break Out Of It - Andrew Chen, General Partner,
Andreessen Horowitz

• Unit Of Value - A Framework For Scaling - Jerry Chen, Partner, Greylock Partners.

• The Product Scorecard - Silicon Valley Product Group.

• What Product VPs At High-Growth Startups Have In Common - Mike Belsito, Co-founder, Product Collective.
Skill Development For Product Managers
Leadership
To be effective, you’ve got to learn to ‘influence’. Therefore, a product manager must have
(or develop) leadership skills!

• Product Leadership Rules To Live By From My Experience At Pandora - Jack Krawczyk.

• The Three Skills Of A Great PM - Bubba Murarka.

• Mind The Product’s Martin Eriksson On Product Leadership - Intercom.

• We Don’t Sell Saddles Here - Slack.

• Metrics To Measure And Track The Performance Of The Product Management Team - Quora.
Skill Development For Product Managers
Talks & Interviews (Videos)
For every product manager who needs a little inspiration!

• The Art Of Product Management - Sachin Rekhi, Notejoy.

• 7 Brilliant Little Skills To Master Your Role As A Product Manager - Janna Bastow, ProdPad.

• Build For The Enterprise - Aaron Levie, Founder, Box.

• Competition Is For Losers - Peter Thiel, Founder, Paypal.

Skill Development For Product Managers
Books
A few must-reads for every ambitious product manager!

• Intercom On Product Management - Intercom.

• Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams - Richard
Banfield, Martin Eriksson and Nate Walkingshaw.

• The Lean Product Playbook By Dan Olsen.

• Getting To Yes By Roger Fisher and William Ury.

• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products By Nir Eyal.

• Positioning By Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Skill Development For Product Managers
Podcasts
Podcasts for the product managers looking to grow!

• Announcing The Y Combinator Podcast - Y Combinator.

• Inside Intercom Podcast - Intercom.

• Masters Of Scale - Reid Hoffman, Co-founder, LinkedIn.

• This Is Product Management - This Is Product Management.

• Rocketship.fm - Rocketship.fm.

• Andreessen Horowitz - Software Is Eating The World.

Skill Development For Product Managers
Product Management Communities
Learn from your contemporaries!

• Product Manager HQ (paid)

• Product Managers Community (free)

• Product School (free)

• Mind The Product (free)

Skill Development For Product Managers
Product Management As A Career
Make your own path as a product manager!

• How 5 Product Managers Got Their Start - The Muse.

• How To Become A Product Manager With No Experience - ProdPad.

• How To Be A Better SaaS PM - Tips From Top Saas PMs - Chargify.

• How I Became A Product Manager - Product Manager HQ.

Skill Development For Product Managers
Thought Leaders You Need To Follow!
Keep yourself updated - follow these product management gurus!

• Hunter Walk https://hunterwalk.com/

• Chris Dixon - https://medium.com/@cdixon

• Dustin Curtis - https://dcurt.is/

• Des Traynor - https://blog.intercom.com/author/des/

• Dan Olsen - https://dan-olsen.com/

• Julie Zhou - http://www.juliezhuo.com/

• Diana Kimball Berlin] - https://dianaberlin.com/

Skill Development For Product Managers
Thought Leaders You Need To Follow!

• Ian McAllister - https://medium.com/@ianmcall

• Josh Elman - http://medium.com/@joshelman

• Kenneth Berger - https://medium.com/@kberger

• Paul Adams - https://blog.intercom.com/author/pauladams/

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