Product Management 2024 — First Steps Recommendations
In collaboration with Alex Chastinet.
The last two years changed the Product Management Role in Startups and Tech Companies deeply. Among other changes, we see more seniority, marketing, and business requirements for most of the Product Manager(PM) job opportunities. Lean Startups is back, but now the Indie Hacker approach is also a strong option.
In this article, we share important training and information sources based on the new challenges the PMs will face in the market.
The Basics — Business and Product Marketing
Business and marketing new requirements are the strongest trend for PMs. This is not new, but in the Spotify Model Era, the PMs were closer to the delivery and this change is exactly the opposite.
Steve Blank — How to Build a Startup
In this course, a legend of tech entrepreneurship walks through the business model using the Lean Approach.
Additionally, you can access other basic content in this link from his blog.
Clay Christensen — Disruptive Strategy
Strategy is the next step when you have the tools and the approaches in place. In this course, another legend explains the strategy path for innovators.
If you are a book person, some related to this topic are:
- Competing Against Luck — by Clay M. Christensen et. all.
- Freemium Economics — Eric Benjamin Seufert
- Intercom on Jobs‑to‑be‑Done — by Des Traynor
Ash Maurya — Lean Stack
If you already are an experienced Lean practitioner, we recommend the courses and the books from Ash Maurya. He has a different and practical Lean approach that is constantly updated.
Data Skills — Making decisions
Data is still a king and one of the most impacted roles in this context are Product Managers. They should cultivate the capacity to analyze, interpret, and make data-driven decisions to develop this critical skill.
From the company's direction (customers’ pain points; strategic objectives), PMs define and propose the problems that should be addressed by the solutions. The data analysis skill is core here.
Then, to validate and guarantee the success. They apply a series of interventions and tests, collect the results, analyze them, and decide the next step, restarting the learning cycle. Access to reliable data is essential to succeed in this process.
Finally, it is also crucial to navigate through the data points, discard the noise, apply the right math tool, and extract actionable insights to drive the expected results. This is all very important to establish great communication in a team.
Here, you can find some resources to help you sharpen your data skills:
Online Courses
Interesting books to explore
- Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
- Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
- Product Analytics: Applied Data Science Techniques for Actionable Consumer Insights
Indie Hacker Approach
An indie hacker is an individual committed to transforming their digital ideas or businesses into reality. They are ambitious, working independently without reliance on external resources, and with great determination to succeed. This unique approach to entrepreneurship has led to the formation of a global community of kindred spirits, all united by their passion for autonomy, creative independence, and minimal external investment. — Trydome.io
Indie Hackers are using a set of tools to bootstrap sustainable businesses in a very fast way. It’s something similar to Extreme Programming (XP) was for Software Development Processes back in the 2000s. For some people, this is the default approach to building a tech company today. But even if you don't like their bootstrap mindset, you can take advantage of their approach which doesn’t require a big team to build a product.
Some technologies and methods that they use are: No-code/low-code; Don't reinvent the wheel and use SaaS/Micro-SaaS with APIs; Velocity matters so use connectors like Zapier and IFTTT; And take advantage of trends by using the new AI models as soon as possible.
Some courses are:
This context requires that you keep constantly updated because a lot of things evolve very fast. So, the main point here is understanding the concepts and then, when it’s time to build something, you just go to the documentation of the technology and implement it.
General Overview
Another even faster approach is to pick a Product School. They usually have a set of courses that cover most of the general aspects that a PM should master.
We have two recommendations: PM3 for Portuguese speakers and Reforge for the English ones.
Apply your learnings
There is no right or wrong answer regarding the tool/method you should use in a project. This is because it's rare to have exactly the same context in two different projects/businesses. In this context, applying your learning as much as possible is very important. This is a must when you are transitioning from a different role.
Beyond starting a side project, you can take advantage of events like Startup Weekends, when you can simulate a real-world collaboration. You can also participate in communities, trying to share your thoughts and receiving feedback.
Beyond tech conference
My friends, me and Alex Chastinet are organizing an event to discuss the new approaches related to product and tech. The goal is to create groups of experienced people to analyze and create recommendations based on their tacit knowledge. As a result, we aim to share simple, contextualized, and straightforward knowledge to the technology community.
If you are interested in being updated and/or participating, please fill out this form to let us know.
