Product Manager Resources

February 7, 2021 (updated September 21, 2022)

I’ve had a peo­ple ask from time-to-time for ar­ti­cles that give a good overview of the prod­uct man­age­ment role along with re­sources for im­prov­ing as a prod­uct man­ager. This is a list of the must-read re­sources that I’ve found on­line and in books.

What is the role of a prod­uct man­ager?

The first link is­n’t an ar­ti­cle, but I’ve al­ways loved this clip as it quickly com­mu­ni­cates the essence of the prod­uct man­ager role. The fol­low­ing ar­ti­cles all give a well-rounded overview of what a prod­uct man­ager does.

• Bud Tribble and Steve Jobs de­scrib­ing a Product Manager role in 1986 (YouTube)
• What, ex­actly, is a Product Manager? | Mind the Product
• The Product Manager Contribution | Silicon Valley Product Group
• What Does a Product Manager Do? | Brent Tworetzky

Product man­age­ment newslet­ters

Lately I’ve found that most of the new things that I learn in prod­uct come from newslet­ters. The newslet­ters I’ve linked to be­low are those that I con­sis­tently glean in­sights from.

• Marty Cagan’s SVPG Newsletter
• Lenny’s Newsletter (This is a paid newslet­ter at $150 per year which in­cludes ac­cess to a Slack prod­uct com­mu­nity, prod­uct re­sources, and live in­ter­views with prod­uct lead­ers — it’s to­tally worth it)
• John Cutler’s “Beautiful Mess”
• Ken Norton’s “Bringing the Donuts”
• Gibson Biddle’s “Friends of Gib” Newsletter

Essential prod­uct man­age­ment books

If I could put to­gether a class on prod­uct man­age­ment, these books would be the re­quired read­ing. Not all of them are strictly about prod­uct man­ag­ment but they will ab­solutely help you im­prove as a prod­uct man­ager.

• Inspired by Marty Cagan
• Continuous Discovery by Teresa Torres
• Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

Photo by elu­oec on Unsplash.

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Thoughts? Questions? Feel free to reach out to me at matt.bax­[email protected].