40 (or so) Useful Links for Product Managers

This list is far from all-inclusive. I’ve left out entire categories and capabilities that are critical to being a great PM (e.g. measurement, analytics). But some essentials are here. It’s a list I maintain for myself as a reminder to go back and re-read some of these things from time to time. Hopefully you find some of these writings as useful as I do.

Program Management

• Good PM / Bad PM — Ben Horowitz
• Let’s Talk About Product Management — Josh Elman
• A Product Manager’s Job — Josh Elman
• Long Roadmaps — Fred Wilson
• What’s the Atomic Unit of Your Product/Service — Fred Wilson
• The Role of a Product Manager — Steven Sinofsky
• Why Software Sucks — Scott Berkun
• Software Inventory — Joes Spolsky
• Leading Without Coding — Aaron Schildkrout
• How to Write a Painless Product Requirements Document — Jerry Cao
• Creating an Environment for Creativity & Empowerment — Ben Chestnut
• How to Destroy Programmer Productivity — George Stocker
• How to Run a Problem-Solving Meeting — Seth Godin
• How to Build Great Products — Slav Akhmechet
• Product Strategy Means Saying No & Rarely Say Yes to Feature Requests — Intercom
• Four Questions Towards Understanding User Adoption of Your Product — Josh Elman
• Getting The Right Stuff Done — Steven Sinofsky

Design

• Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling Adapted for UX — ThoughtWorks
• The 8 Steps to Creating a Great Storyboard — Jake Knapp
• Simple or Minimal? — Tim Brown
• Too Much Choice — Bryce Roberts
• Empathy — Graham D Brown
• Great Design Isn’t About Making Things Pretty — First Round Review
• Don’t Listen to Your Users — Gillian Morris
• How We Know User Onboarding is Really About The First Session — Nandini Jammi
• Guide to SaaS Customer Onboarding — Ed Shelley

Miscellaneous Marketing/Business/Leadership

• Rules of Business — Stewart Butterfield
• Go-To-Market Best Practices for Startups — Mark Cranney, Jaimie Buss, Tom Butta, Mahesh Iyer (a16z)
• 16 Startup Metrics & 16 More Startup Metrics — Jeff Jordan, Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen (a16z)
• How to Design a Pitch Deck — Daniel Eckler
• Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule — Paul Graham
• Being a Leader, Not a Micromanaging Editor — Steven Sinofsky
• Want a Better Pitch? Watch This — Andy Raskin
• Our Startup Needed to Grow — Krista Anne
• How to Start a Movement — Derek Sivers
• Do Things that Don’t Scale — Paul Graham
• Startup = Growth — Paul Graham
• Management Cliches That Work — Steven Sinofsky
• Feet on the Street — Seth Godin
• 16 Product Things I learned at Imgur — Sam Gerstenzang
• 3 Ways to Improve Storytelling — Jerry Silfwer
• How to Price Something — Jason Fried
• Camels and Rubber Duckies — Joel Spolsky
• Sales Lessons From 13 Year Old Who Sold 22,000 Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies — Hunter Walk
• Defining a High Performance Team — Sarah Hui
• Building a Sales and Marketing Machine — David Skok
• 5 Reasons Your Team Gets Stuck with Inbound Marketing — Clement Vouillon