PM knowledge base

This page is designed to collect ideas (from awesome Product People) to expand your toolkit - it is not a modular, personalised system.

The resources here aim to support product managers explore, learn and grow at their own pace. It’s a collection of content that spans various skill levels, as well as various levels of depth/commitment. They are resources to help a successful journey in your product career as a whole.

Most of the resources here are free - to those who sharing and give, thank you!

Recommended books and talks for product managers

These talks (most are also books) are highly recommended:

Josh Seiden: Outcomes over outputs. A very accessibly story of transitioning from output to outcomes.

Melissa Perri: Escaping the build trap. This is a great story about the transition from delivery = success, to business result = success. The talk is mostly a pitch to sell the book and it’s a great for Product fundamentals.

Jared Spool: Building a winning Product and UX strategy with the Kano Model. “You’re never one feature away from success”. Kano model - how today’s excitement generators become tomorrow’s basic expectations. “Feature, feature, feature, feature, feature “

Teressa Tores: Continuous Discovery and the opportunity solution tree (OST) (OST overview starts at 12:05). Great ideation and alignment tool. With a desired outcome in mind, ask the team how do we make that happen? Ideate on solutions, ask what assumptions you’re making about how that achieves the desired result and then experiment to find out.

Marty Cagan: INSPIRED: Creating product customers love. Provides a general overview of Product Management

Marty Cagan: Empowered product teams. Warning - I’ve drunk the Cagan KoolAid. His SVPG workshops are amazing if you ever have the chance.

Martin Moore: SELLING YOUR PROPOSAL Getting the boss onboard. A lot of his thinking resonates with me (check out his other podcasts). In this ep, he's talking about bigger ticket things - however, the process and questions scale down so well to smaller product ideas. Gets a little bit technical on the financial modelling stuff probably overkill for PMs

Jake Knapp: Design Sprints. Do we jump straight into product development based on internal decision making? Are we lacking customer empathy and testing? Some stories and tips on how to shift towards iterative testing.

Dan Olsen: Creating a winning value prop

Gibson Biddle: Intro to Product Strategy

Alex Osterwalder: The invincible company

Julie Zhuo: Building with creative confidence

Eric Ries: Lean Startup

Tony Ulwick: Outcome driven innovation From Mind the Product conf 2017

Rob Fitzpatrick: The mom test

Jeff Gothelf: Lean, agile & design thinking

John Cutler: One pagers. Clarity. Alignment. Impact

David Bland: Testing Business Ideas. The book contains 100+ testing tools with playbooks for business types and lifecycle stages

Nurafni Eka Agustina has done a super job of curating a bunch of great content on YouTube - loads of useful stuff for PMs

FREE PRODUCT EBOOKS

Intercom on Product

PM Library on Medium

Product School on YouTube | Y Combinator on YouTube |

Supporting materials

Overview and Example Product Briefs

• Overview: <tbc>

• Mini: <tbc>

General Prioritisation Guidance

PMs are responsible for understanding deeply and trading off all types of ideas - be they issues or opportunities. Given a choice, the aim should be to bias towards strategic objectives.

There are lots of different methodologies for prioritisation and we all have our preferences given product scope and experience. At the end of the day the most important thing to support valuable prioritisation are clearly articulated goals and measures of progress. If you’re having problems with prioritisation…..it might be a sign the goals and measures of success need attention. Pro-tip: A different prioritisation tool won’t make up for lack of clear outcomes.

There are many ways to effectively negotiate and balance the various needs of your backlog. A common practice to consider is to establish pre-defined budgets for certain types of issues such as bugs, security, features, deal enablement, or others. To do this, work with your Engineering Lead to define a percentage of your team's capacity to reserve for each milestone, ensuring the team can adequately execute on feature delivery, bugs, tech debt, and scaling without interrupting work intra-milestone. Typically, this can be between 20-30% of the team's capacity depending on the maturity and team size. These budgets are not an excuse to “set and forget” time aside for categories of issues.

Product Managers are responsible for ensuring a deep understanding of what is being worked on in their Product area and how it correlates to customer results. If you explore how budgets might work, remember they should not be used as a floor or a ceiling. Use your judgment to contract and expand to achieve the desired outcomes.

General Product Management learning content

This content is divided into five key competencies for Product Managers.

💡 Discovery 🚀 Delivery 📈 Business Acumen 💬 Communication 🤝 Team Management

💡 Discovery

💡 User research

Quick reads and videos

• Paul Adams: Great PMs don't spend their time on solutions

Deeper dive

• Introduction to Modern Product Discovery

• Just Enough Research
  (59 min video)

Online courses

• Nielson Norman Group Trainings and Events

Books

• Steve Krug: Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems

• Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson: The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

• Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow

• Erika Hall: Just Enough Research

• Cindy Alverez: Lean Customer Development

💡 Customer interviewing

Quick reads and videos

• 'Get in the Van' and Other Tips for Getting Meaningful Customer Feedback

• The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions

Deeper dive

• Teresa Torres: Adopting Continuous Product Discovery Practices

• Product Talk: Customer Interviews Articles

Online courses

• Continuous Interviewing by Product Talk

Books

• Interviewing for Research by Andrew Travers

• Talking to Humans (alternate free pdf)

• The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

• Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

💡 Jobs to be done

Quick reads and videos

• JTBD: Jobs To Be Done (Overview)

• Clayton Christensen - Understanding the Job (5 min video)

• Know Your Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done”

Deeper dive

• JTBD: Jobs to be Done - Deep Dive

• Bob Moesta & Chris Spiek - Uncovering the Jobs to be Done (57 min video)

• Tony Ulwick - Customer Centred Innovation (57 min video) (quicker article)

• Xavier Russo - A step-by-step guide to using Outcome Driven Innovation

Online courses

• Mastering Jobs-To-Be-Done Interviews

Books

• Clayton M. Christensen et al: Competing Against Luck

• Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done (free ebook download)

💡 Lean product development

Quick reads and videos

• How to Build a Minimum Loveable Product

Deeper dive

• Melissa Perri - Lean Product Management (42 min video)

• How to Run Amazing Remote Design Sprints! (60 min video)

• Design Sprint Exercise Video Series

Online courses

• LinkedIn Learning: UX Research: Lean Experimentation

Books

• Eric Ries: The Lean Startup

• Jake Knapp: Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

• Ash Maurya: Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works

• Dan Olsen: The Lean Product Playbook

• David Bland: Testing Business Ideas

💡 Growth and experimentation

Quick reads and videos

• Product Managers: It's Time to Move from Whole Product to Product-led Growth

• 10 Statistics Traps in A/B Testing: The Ultimate Guide for Optimisers

• 5 Common Threats to Your A/B Test’s Validity

Deeper dive

• Product Led Growth Resources

• GrowthHackers: Growth University

Online courses

• Reforge

Books

• Sean Ellis: Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

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

• Trusworthy Online Controlled Experiments

• Intercom: The Growth Handbook (free ebook download)

Podcast

• Masters of Scale

💡 Design

Quick reads and videos

• Julie Zhuo: How to Work with Designers

• Jess Eddy: What do designers really want from product managers?

• Jared Spool: Using the Kano Model to Build Delightful UX (45 min video)

Deeper dive

• Leaders of Awesomeness

• The Complete Guide to the Kano Model

Online courses

• LinkedIn Learning: Learning Design Thinking

• LinkedIn Learning: Accessibility for Web Design

Books

• Don Norman: The Design of Everyday Things

• Steve Krug: Don't Make Me Think

• Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook

• The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide

• Jeff Gothelf: Lean UX

🚀 Delivery

🚀 User stories

Quick reads and videos

• How to split a user story

• Replacing The User Story With The Job Story

Deeper dive

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Online courses

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Books

• Jeff Patton: User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

🚀 Backlog management

Quick reads and videos

• Brandon Chu: Ruthless Prioritization

• Sean McBride: RICE: Simple prioritisation for product managers

• Ash Maurya: Love the Problem, Not Your Solution

• Launch mode vs iterate mode

Deeper dive

• Idea Prioritisation With ICE and The Confidence Meter

• Yourproductmentor.com | Idea prioritisation (RICE)

Online courses

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Books

• Donald G. Reinertsen: The Principles of Product Development Flow

🚀 Working with Engineering

Quick reads and videos

How Asana develop great PM <> Eng relationships

Deeper dive

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Online courses

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Books

• Fred Brooks Jr: The Mythical Man Month

📈 Business acumen

📈 Product strategy

Quick reads and videos

• Marty Cagan: Vision Vs. Strategy

• Des Traynor: Product strategy means saying no

• Ken Norton's Discipline of No

• Gibson Biddle: How to Define Your Product Strategy

• How to run a quarterly Product Strategy meeting with Gibson Biddle

• How to think strategically

• The Product Strategy Stack - Reforge

Deeper dive

• Des Traynor: Product Strategy Revisited (54 min video)

• Ken Sandy: Building a killer Product Strategy (10 min intro, 70min video)

Online courses

• Reforge

• Roman Pichler: Product Strategy & Roadmap

Books

• Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers

• Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation

• Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age

📈 Competitive analysis

Quick reads and videos

• Stop Ignoring Your Competitors…

• The Startup Chat: Episode 319: How To Do Competitor Analysis

Deeper dive

• SaaSFest Keynote: Building a Saas Company Isn't What it Used to Be

Online courses

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Books

Please contribute your favourite resources here

📈 KPIs and Metrics

Quick reads and videos

• John Doerr: Why the secret to success is setting the right goals (5 min video)

• David Skok: SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters

Deeper dive

• Financial Modelling for Product Managers (60 min video)

Online courses

• LinkedIn Learning: SQL Essential Training

Books

• Christina Wodtke: Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results ( OKRs )

• Douglas W. Hubbard: How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intagibles in Business

• Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics

• John Doerr: Measure what matters

• Andy Grove: High output management

• https://gtmhub.com/download-the-ultimate-okrs-playbook ​(free ebook download)

💬 Communication

💬 Relationships with customers

Quick reads and videos

• How can I say this? Podcast

Deeper dive

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Online courses

• LinkedIn Learning: Advanced Business Development Communication & Negotiation

Books

• Building a Story brand

💬 Writing to inspire, align and activate

Quick reads and videos

Paul Graham: Write Simply

Deeper dive

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Online courses

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Books

Please contribute your favourite resources here

💬 Presentations, prepared and adhoc

Quick reads and videos

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Deeper dive

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Online courses

• LinkedIn Learning: Communicating for Product Managers

Books

• {coming soon}

Templates and Examples

• Preso templates: Slides Carnival | Slidesgo

🤝 Team management

🤝 Stakeholder management

Quick reads and videos

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Deeper dive

• Rosemary King: Stakeholders, let 'em in (20 min video)

Online courses

• Managing Project Stakeholders (LinkedIn Learning course)

Books

Please contribute your favourite resources here

🤝 Cross-functional team management

Quick reads and videos

• HBR: What cross functional teams need to succeed

Deeper dive

Please contribute your favourite resources here

Online courses

• LinkedIn Learning: Cross Functional Team Management

Books

• Dare to Lead

• Radical Candor

🤝 Direct team leadership

New Leads

Quick reads and videos

• The New Manager Death Spiral

• How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence to Become a Better Leader

Deeper dive

• The New Manager Death Spiral (30 min video)

Online courses

• LinkedIn Learning: Building High Performing Teams

Books

• Kim Scott: Radical Candor

• Michael Lopp: Managing Humans

• Julie Zhuo: The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

• First Round Essentials: Management (free ebook download)

• Doug Stone & Sheila Heen: Thanks for the Feedback

• Kerry Patterson: Crucial Conversations

🤝 Leadership and influence

Quick reads and videos

• Start with why – how great leaders inspire action (18 min video)

• Leadership Biz Cafe Podcast

• Mindset (42 min video)

Deeper dive

• LinkedIn Learning: Executive Leadership (1h 19m total)

Online courses

• LinkedIn Learning Path: Strategic Leadership

Podcasts

• No Bullshit Leadership

• HBR IdeaCast

Books

• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

• Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

• Carol Dweck: Mindset

Product management rockstars

Blogs, videos and podcasts and more…

There is a lot of amazing content and ongoing trends in the world of product development. Subscribing to blogs, video channels and other ongoing content streams is a great way to get inspiration on best practices and product innovation with your team. Here are some recommendations on where to start:

Blogs

• https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/

• https://svpg.com/articles/

• https://www.intercom.com/blog/product-and-design/

• https://producthabits.com/blog/ ​by product habit

• https://www.mindtheproduct.com/

• https://cutlefish.substack.com/

Podcasts

• Mind the Product

• Masters of Scale

• Rocketship.fm

• Dollars to Donuts

• Presentable

Newsletters

• Mind the Product Newsletter

Other

• Mind the Product Slack channel

• Product League

• Product School (YouTube Channel)

• Women In Product (YouTube Channel)

• Nurafni Eka Agustina has done a super job of curating a bunch of great content on YouTube - loads of useful stuff for PMs

Other great product thinkers

One of the best ways to stay in the know is to follow people! There are a lot of folks openly sharing their ideas and best practices. We encourage you to follow and exchange ideas with people who inspire you. Here are some recommendations on where to start:

• Jackie Bavaro

• Marty Cagan | SVPG Blog (a gold mine) | Book: INSPIRED | Book: Empowered Teams

• John Cutler

• Ken Norton | Bring the Donuts

• Jeff Patton | Jeff’s Blog | Book: User story mapping

• Roman Pichler | Roman’s Blog

• Gibson Biddle | Gib’s talks

• Reid Hoffman | Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman | The Start-up of You