Getting started as a product manager: A few tips for newbies
Starting a new career path or transitioning from one where you’ve bossed for a long time to a new one where you feel clueless at the start can really be overwhelming and scary at first. Especially with the lot of resources out there that pose the questions ‘where do I start from’, ‘What am I supposed to be looking for’, one could easily get ‘lost’ and feel even more overwhelmed.
I recently transitioned from web development to product management a few months ago and I can tell you that the journey though fun can get lonely and scary real quick. I mean, you did just found your niche in tech finally and you’re ready to do the work, you have these amazing plans in your head but reality is totally different so how exactly do you start ? Here are a few tips that has helped me.
Understanding Product Management Concept
First thing you need to do is understand what product management is, who a product manager is and what does a product manager do ? Also know the key difference between project and product management as well as the role of a project manager vs a product manager.
What is Product Management?
There are several answers to this but the layman definition will be ‘the process of driving products from inception to delivery and throughout the entire product’s lifecycle”.
Some will say it’s the process of looking after a product to ensure the overall success of the product which is equally right. Now, to ensure the success of a product, a lot of things goes into that which involves planning/researching, analysis, design, implementation/development, testing & integration and maintenance.
All these as a whole form the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) which is a structured process used to create applications.
Project Management VS Product Management
While product management involves driving a product from inception to delivery and throughout a product’s lifecycle, project management is the process of planning, executing and completing projects within the given constraints (time, budget and scope). One major difference is that product management is ongoing for as long as the product is live while project management comes to an end once the project goals have been met and the project/product is launched.
Another difference is that in product management, there’s an ongoing cost to maintain the product while it’s live and in project management, budget is fixed — a fixed budget is determined during the planning phase.
Who is a Product Manager ?
A keyword ‘driving’ can be picked from the definition of product management. Therefore, Product Managers are drivers who are responsible for driving and delivering a product to the market that people need and want to buy(product market fit).
Often times, I have come across a few PMs on social media where they wrote on their bio ‘at the intersection of business, design and development’ which is exactly who a product manager is.
Product Manager Role
You work with cross-functional teams that consist of the business department which include the marketing, sales, finance team, legal team etc., the design team which include the product designers, UX researcher, brand identity designers, etc., the engineering team which include the software engineers, quality assurance testers etc. as well as stakeholders.
Some PM roles include:
- Defining product vision and roadmap
- Carrying out customer surveys/interviews to understand users pain point
- Finding a product market fit
- Prioritizing customer needs
- Determining success metrics and product features
- Working alongside other departments to bring the product to life
Some PM Skills include:
- Communication skills
- Time management
- Problem-solving
- Strong leadership skills
- Ability to prioritize and delegate effectively
- Flexibility
- Be a team player
- Be patient
- Be up to date, up-skill, learn about the tech industry
- Learn, learn, learn
As a PM, your roles and skills aren’t limited to ones mentioned above, you need to learn about the key roles and artifact in product management. A tip to find more is to google product managers job description and you’ll see a lot more.
PS: PM roles are company dependent, the fundamentals are the same though
Project Manager VS Product Manager
While both roles are similar in some ways, here are a few differences in the key functions of a product manager vs a project manager.
Product Management Learning Resources
Finding the right learning resources to help you understand and grasp the concept of product management can be quiet overwhelming like I mentioned earlier. I have curated a list of learning resources both free and paid for newbies going into PM.
- free courses on product school: productschool.teachable.com
- Scrum: scrum.org
- Technical PM: coursera.org/learn/introduction-to-software-product-management?action=enroll
- Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/become-a-product-manager-learn-the-skills-get-a-job/
- Product dive — productdive.com
- Free scrum certification: certiprof.com/pages/sfpc
- Free MSI PM Certifications — https://www.msicertified.com/project-management/free-certifications/
- Google Project Management Course: https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-project-management
- PMDojo’s Product Accelerator Program: https://www.pmdojo.me/product-accelerator
- Follow product school, productHQ, Product Africa and https://www.youtube.com/pmdiegogranados on YouTube
You can find more from my thread on twitter — https://twitter.com/the_florencee/status/1485012430887477251?
Ps: Learning takes time and we all have our different learning paths. Do it at your own pace and do what works best for you.
Join Product Management Communities
Joining a community is really important when you’re starting a new career path, you’d be able to meet like-minded people you can connect with, learn with/from and work with. Ensure to find a learning partner, make sure the person is as ambitious and hardworking as you are, share resources, opportunities and collaborate on projects together to build your portfolio.
Another thing you’ll find in a community are mentors. Connect with the ones that align with your beliefs, reach out to them, and ask if they would mentor you or recommend someone who’s open to mentoring. One thing I have come to realize is that the product management community is really supportive(at least the ones I have come across), follow them on social media. They’re always more than happy to help. I hope you find an amazing one.
Here are a list of communities you can join/follow:
- Tech twitter community — https://twitter.com/i/communities/1472105760389668865
- Product Twitter — https://twitter.com/i/communities/1491421669839282180
- The Product Manager Community — https://twitter.com/i/communities/1494313354516566020
- Mentor Mesh — https://community.mentormesh.io
- Follow @womenpmnetwork @ProjectTips @Seunzone @SimplyAzodo Peopleinproduct Community(@peopleinproduct) ProjectManager.com (@ProjectTips) @productschool @Nontech_it on twitter
PS: You can always google to find more communities to join.
Get Familiar with some Product Management Tools
There are lot of tools out there you need to learn how to use as a product manager, no need to fret honestly as there are tutorials on YouTube that can help you easily grasp how to use them. Here are a few you should get familiar with:
- Google docs, MS word — for documentations
- Google slides, PPTX, pitch.com — for pitch decks
- Miro, Whimsical — for user flow, roadmapping, Kanban board etc
- Notion — documentations, group collaboration, PM( you can use it to document your portfolio like I did too)
- Asana, Trello, Jira — Project Management, sprints, task management
- Google forms, MS forms, SurveyMonkey — for User research, Customer surveys
- Figma, Adobe XD , Balsamiq— Wireframing and prototyping
- Google analytics, Mix Panel, Pendo — Product analytics
- requstory.com — for user stories and it supports team collaboration
You can find more from my thread on twitter https://twitter.com/the_florencee/status/1501589840592318465?s=21
PS: Using these tools not only help you effectively do your work but also help you gain hard skills such as product design, data analytics and so on. With product management, you get to learn from different industries!
Additional Tips
I have been on several twitter spaces where they talked about breaking into product management. Here are some key takeaways from these spaces:
What you need
- A mentor to help guide you, someone you can learn from, someone that can give you clarity
- Someone on your right hand- A peer you can journey with so you can rub minds, share ideas e.g someone who’s new to PM
- Someone on your left hand — someone that’d critic you and advice you
- Someone who supports you and you can lean on
How to gather experience
- Volunteer to work on real life products
- Write feedbacks on products you use and share with the world
- Do product comparison
- Share your experiences on products you’ve used, suggest things they can do better
All these can help you build a portfolio before you apply for your first PM job.
Final Thoughts
Product management is really fun and while we each have our different learning paths, we all have to start somewhere which is the main thing. Quit procrastinating and just start the work because once you get to learning, other things will flow naturally.
Also, don’t worry about the title/role, don’t worry about putting together a portfolio and don’t worry about how long it’s going to take you to get to that comfortable position, just be dedicated to the process and do the work! Everything will fall in place 😃.
