1

THE
PRODUCT
BOOK
JO SH AN O N
and

CA R LOS G O NZÁL E Z D E VI LLAUM B RO S IA

PUBLISHED BY
The Product Book: How to Become a Great Product Manager
Copyright ©2017 Product School
All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by

any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise,
without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a
website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

LEGAL NOTE
All trademarks are property of their respective owners. Unless otherwise noted, all text
and images are copyright Product School, and they may not be reproduced without
permission.

ISBNS 978-0-9989738-0-7 PRINT

978-0-9989738-3-8 MOBI

BOOK DESIGN The Frontispiece

PUBLISHED BY Product School

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 7

1 What Is Product Management 9

2 Strategically Understanding a Company 32

3 Creating an Opportunity Hypothesis 64

4 Validating Your Hypothesis 109

5 From Idea to Action 149

6 Working with Design 189

7 Working with Engineering 218

8 Bringing Your Product to Market 243

9 Finishing the Product-Development Life Cycle 279

Acknowledgments 300

About the Authors 302

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for picking up this book! We know your time is valuable, and 7
we will do our best to make this book worth your while.
One of the most important parts of being a product manager is knowing
who your customers are and what they need. So, who do we believe you are,
and what need will this book fill? Fundamentally, you are someone who’d
like to know more about product management. Maybe you’re a recent
graduate trying to figure out if product management is the right career
for you. Maybe you’re an engineer actively transitioning into product
management. Maybe you’re a start-up founder figuring out how to build
your product division. Or maybe you’re already a product manager who
naturally evolved into the role, seeking to fill gaps in your knowledge.
Furthermore, there’s a lot of wisdom out there regarding best practices
for product managers, but most of it focuses on parts of the product-
development life cycle. This book will give you an end-to-end view of
what goes into building a great product, as well as what product managers
do each day.
 The upcoming chapters will cover a mix of theory and practical
advice to teach you how to identify an opportunity, and build a product
successfully to address that opportunity, whether the result is a new
product or a refinement of an existing product. Whether you are new to
product management, or an experienced veteran, this book is here to help
you learn the needed skills to be a successful and effective product leader.
A brief word of warning: Much like chess, poker, and Minecraft,
product management is easy to learn, but can take a lifetime to master. If
your goal is to be a product manager, consider this book the start of your
journey. Becoming a truly effective product manager takes practice!
If after reading this book you still want to become a product manager,
consider enrolling in Product School, the world’s first tech business
school. Product School offers product management classes taught by
real-world product managers, working at renowned tech companies
like Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Airbnb, LinkedIn, PayPal, and Netflix.
8 Product School’s classes are designed to fit into your work schedule, and
the campuses are conveniently located in Silicon Valley, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and New York.
Now, read on to begin your journey through the wide and fascinating
world of product management.
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT IS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT?

“Nobody asked you to show up.” Every experienced product manager has 9
heard some version of those words at some point in their career. In this case,
those painfully frustrating words are from Ken Norton, partner at Google
Ventures, in a blog post titled “How to Hire a Product Manager.” Think
about a company for a second. Engineers build the product. Designers
make sure it has a great user experience and looks good. Marketing makes
sure customers know about the product. Sales gets potential customers to
open their wallets to buy the product. What more does a company need?
Where does a product manager fit into that mix?
Those simple questions are what cause not only the confusion, but
also the opportunity that comes with product management. Heck, if
you’re transitioning into product management, these questions might
make you worry that product managers are irrelevant. And if you are
currently a product manager, you might feel a sudden need to justify
your existence. Truthfully, without a product manager a company will
 continue to operate pretty well—to a point. Yet with a strong product
manager a company can become great.

WHAT DO PRODUCT MANAGERS DO?

Put simply, a product manager (PM) represents the customer. No one
buys a product because they want to give the company money. Customers
buy and use products because the products address their needs. Done
properly, the products let the customers be awesome. The end result of
representing the customer is that a PM helps the customer be awesome.
There’s a lot behind this simple definition, though. Adam Nash, CEO
of Wealthfront and former VP of product at LinkedIn, summed up
product management by saying, PMs figure out what game a company
is playing, and how it keeps score (hint: it’s not always about how much
money the company makes).

10 Day to day, PMs must understand both business strategy and

execution. They must first figure out who the customers are and what
THE PRODUCT BOOK

problems the customers have. They must know how to set a vision,
finding the right opportunities in a sea of possibilities, by using both data
and intuition. They must know how to define success, for the customer
and the product, by prioritizing doing what is right over doing what
is easy. They must know how to work with engineers and designers to
get the right product built, keeping it as simple as possible. They must
know how to work with marketing to explain to the customer how the
product fills the customer’s need better than a competitor’s product. They
must do whatever’s needed to help ship the product, finding solutions
rather than excuses. Sometimes, this even means a PM getting coffee for
a team that’s working long hours to show appreciation. By the way, PMs
manage products, not people, so they must achieve everything using soft
influence, effective communication, leadership, and trust—not orders.