Product Management

PM101

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Intro

• Required Reading

  • (HBR) What Does It Take To Be A Great Product Manager  - Julia Austin

  • (Book) Technically Wrong - Sara Wachter-Boettcher

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• Recommended Reading

  • Ken Norton (class guest) has a great reading list here.

  • The Mom Test  - Rob Fitzpatrick

  • The Power of Moments  - The Heath Brothers

 

Personas & Product Vision

• Required Readings

  • How Many Customers Should You Interview? by Customer Development Labs

  • Know Your Customers’ “Jobs To Be Done” by Clayton Christensen et. al., HBR

  • Design Personas vs. Marketing Personas by Stephanie Owens

  • Product Vision by Joel on Software

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• Recommended Reading​

• Terrific books on how to conduct early customer research:

  • Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez.

  • Observing the User Experience by Goodman et al.

  • Survey Monkey White Paper on Survey Design

  • Jobs to be Done by Wunker, Wattman & Farber

  • Inspired - How to Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagen

 

The Art of No-Tech Testing

• Required Reading

  • How to Listen to Customers. by Ken Norton

 

• Recommended Reading/Listening

  • Handcrafted, Brian Cheskey (Airbnb), by Masters of Scale (podcast)

  • Concierge vs. Wizard of Oz Test, by Grasshopper Herder

  • A Step-by-Step Guide to Using a Landing Page Test to Validate Your Concept. by Aymeric Guarat-Apelli

 

Talking With Customers​​

• Recommended Reading

  • Ten Things I've Learned by Cindy Alvarez

  • Improve Your Startup's Surveys and Get Even Better Data by Elizabeth Farrell-Nunge

  • Repeat Suggestion: The Mom Test  - Rob Fitzpatrick

 

Journey Maps & Storyboarding

• Required Reading

  • (diagram) The Elements of User Experience  by Jesse James Garrett

  • (article) When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps by Kate Kaplan

  • (article) Journey Mapping Powers Better Design Thinking by Jay Melone

  • (article) The UX Design Success Ladder. Achieving Meaningful Product Design by Ward Andrews

  • (article) Five Essential Components of Successful Customer Journey Maps by Phil Goddard, Ph.D. and Kathleen Hoski

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• Recommended Reading

  • (article) How Snow White Helped Airbnb’s mobile Mission by Sarah Kessler

  • Terrific books that cover core principles of user experience design:

    • Mapping Experiences by James Kalbach

    • The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper

    • The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

    • Hooked by Nir Eyal

    • Sense and Response by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

    • The User Experience team of One by Leah Buley

  • UX Mapping Cheat Sheet by Sarah Gibbons

  • Designing the Conversational UI 

 

Software Development Methods

• Required Reading​

  • Software Development Methodologies (an overview), John Sonmez

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• Recommended Reading/Watching

  • This 7-minute video on Scrum 7-minute video

  • Intro to Modern Agile - by Joshua Kerievsky

  • “Shipping Beats Perfection” Explained by Ben Kamens

  • Integrating Agile and UX Design - by Jonathan Follett (O’Reilly)

  • 20 Product Prioritization Techniques - by Daniel Zacarias

  • The following books provide an overview of software development methods:

  • Agile Product Management with Scrum, Roman Pichler -- another overview of agile principles and practices, this one written from the product owner's perspective and centered around the Scrum method

  • User Story Mapping, Jeff Patton -- integrates agile development into a product development process that includes customer discovery and MVP testing. The book's core ideas are captured in this presentation

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PRD Best Practices

• Required Reading​

  • Your MVP is Minimal, But Is It Viable? By Alex Iskold

 

• Recommended Reading

  • How to write a painless Product Requirements Document by Jerry Cao

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User Testing 

• Required Reading:

  • Steve Krug, Usability Test Script

  • Rosie Allabarton, How to Create Your First Wireframe

  • Proto.io, The 10 Commandments for Usability Testing For Mobile Apps 

  • Design Principles, Interactive Design Foundation (short blog and 7min video)

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• Optional Reading

  • Nielsen Norman Group, Turn User Goals into Task Scenarios for Usability Testing

  • Christine Perfetti, Usability Tests in a Nutshell, Part 3: Creating Tasks

  • Kara Pernice, Talking with Participants During a Usability Test

  • Steve Krug, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, is a short, funny, practical book on usability testing by the author of the UI design basics book, Don't Make Me Think!

  • Cole Derochie, Unbounce, Measure Twice, Cut Once: Introducing User Testing into Our Design Process 

  • Janice Redish, Six Steps to Ensure a Successful Usability Test 

 

Wireframe Critiques

• Required Reading

  • Nine Rules for Running a Productive Design Critique - Jake Knapp

  • 23 Questions for Early UI Design

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• Further Reading for PRD Design Principle work:

  • Designing for iOS  and Android Design Principles 

  • Julie Zhuo at Facebook, who has worked as a software engineer, UX designer, and product manager, has written a three-part series on what each role should know about the others' priorities and how they can work together productively. These posts will be of special interest to students who plan to work in tech companies big enough to hire designers. 

    • How to Work with PMs: A Cheat Sheet for Designers

    • How to Work with Designers: A Cheat Sheet for Engineers and PMs (see also Don't Say This to a Designer by Juhi Chitra)

    • How to Work with Engineers: A Cheat Sheet for Designers

 

PM Careers

• Required Reading:

  • (re-read) What Does It Take To Be A Great Product Manager - Julia Austin

  • An Intro to PM Interviewing  - Ellen Chisa

  • Landing an Entry Level PM/APM Role and Do Product Managers Really Need a Background in CS? - Jackie Bavaro

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• Recommended:

  • Cracking the PM Interview (book) and app - Gayle McDowell & Jackie Bavaro

 

Technology Decisions: P1, Basics

• Required Reading​​

  • 10 Tech Terms Even Non-Geeks Should Know - Benjy Weinberger

  • Top Five Technical Skills Every PM Should Know - Colin Lernell

  • Getting to technical enough as a product manager - Lulu Cheng

  • Cloud Computing Introduction - Chris Woodford

  • Native vs. Web vs. Hybrid Apps, What’s the Difference? - Gigvy

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• Recommended Reading​

  • Resources for learning CS Basics Online - Mike Goes Coding

  • Industry icon, Joel On Software, has a great reading list you should bookmark as a founder/PM.

  • The Mythical Man Month is a classic read for anyone in the tech industry. While somewhat dated, it is great historical context

 

Technology Decisions: P2, Hiring

• Required Reading​

  • A Primer on Hiring for Startups - Julia Austin

  • How to Find a Good Freelance Developer - Mark Liu (freelance is now Upwork)

  • 5 Non-Technical Questions to Ask When Hiring a Development Firm - Nick Kishfy

  • Oldie, but still goodie: Guide to Finding a Technical Co-Founder - Vin Vacanti (we also recommend the other posts in Vin's 4-part series on this topic)

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• Recommended Reading

  • Scroll down Prof. Eisenmann's reading list on startup recruiting to a section with lots of good posts on recruiting engineers (including several posts listed here)

  • How to Hire Developer Unicorns  - Ben Slater

  • How to Hire a Programmer - Derek Silvers (overlaps with the Liu post above, but offers some new advice)

  • The Anatomy of the Perfect Technical Interview - Neil Roseman

  • In-House vs. Outsourcing Software Development - Ved Prakash

  • The Technical Co-Founder Search - Michael Woloszynowicz (see also Mariam Naficy's post on her co-founder search at Minted.com)

  • A Tech Founder's Guide to Finding a Non-Tech Founder - Jessica Alter (see also Elizabeth Yin's post on factors that are important to potential tech co-founders)

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PM102 

 

Working With Developers

• Required Reading​

  • Working with Developers at Startups, Abby Fichtner

  • What Your Freelance Developer Contract Should Cover, Codementor

  • Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule, Paul Graham

  • 5 Best Practices for Working with Developers, Stella Garber

  • How to Work with Freelance Software Developers, Greg Jorgensen (a typical programmer)

  • For fun: How to Work with Software Engineers, Ken Norton

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• Recommended Reading​

If you want to delve deeper into how developers think and work, these are good choices.​

• BOOKS:​

  • Frederick Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month is a timeless classic on software project management by the "father of the IBM 360" -- one of history's riskiest and most successful tech product development efforts

  • Paul Glen, Leading Geeks, discusses how developers think, what motivates them, and how to manage them​

• BLOGS:​

  • Facebook's Julie Zhuo has written a trio of posts on how to work with product managers, designers, and engineers -- in each case, from the perspective of one of the other disciplines (Julie has worked in all three). We assigned these for an earlier session, but it's worth re-reading the post on working with engineers

  • Michael Woloszynowicz on how non-technical managers should give feedback to developers

  • Ellen Chisa: Engineers: So your PM Sucks? Here's How to Fix It

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Onboarding

• Required Reading​

  • Onboarding New Users is Harder Than You Think by Nate Munger

  • UserOnboard.com teardowns by Samuel Hulick. Focus on a few teardowns that address issues pertinent to your app.

  • Seven Onboarding Mistakes You Don't Want to Make by Bayram Annakov

 

User Testing

• Required Reading​

  • Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users, Jakob Nielsen

  • User testing v. usability testing: the recurring mix-up, Lindsay Burke, Fresh Tilled Soil

  • (for fun) Why You Should Test Your Mobile App With Drunk People, Fast Company

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• Recommended Reading (books)​

  • Observing The User Experience

  • Don’t Make Me Think

  • The Design of Everyday Things

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Launch Planning

• Required Reading​

  • Product Marketing and Product Management, by Dave Gerhardt

  • 8 Elements of A Robust Product Launch Strategy, by Neil Patel, Forbes

  • The 10 Most Disastrous Product Launches of 2017, by Guadalupe Gonzalez, Inc.

  • Do Things That Don’t Scale, by Paul Graham (a classic, but still very useful read!)

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• Recommended Reading​

  • Product Launch Checklists, From the Oscars to a Software Product Release, Why They’re Necessary, by Maddy Kirsch

  • 5 Pillars to Successful Product Release Adoption, by Nick Bonfiglio

  • It's time to update the marketing/sales funnel...Upgrade MQLs to PQLs!!, by Emmanuelle Skala

 

Product Roadmapping

• Required Reading​​

  • Guide to Product Planning: Three Feature Buckets, by Adam Nash

  • Product Prioritisation 101, by Martin Eriksson

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• Recommended Reading​

  • 20 Product Prioritization Techniques, by Daniel Zacarias. Skim this long post (also available as a free PDF ebook) which describes and categorizes a set of techniques for prioritizing product features.

  • Estimating, by Mitch Lacey. Comprehensive description of different methods for software project cost estimation.

  • Before You Plan Your Product Roadmap, by Des Traynor. How/why to conduct a feature audit that shows the fraction of users who use each feature and their frequency of use.

  • Pandora’s Product Prioritization System, interview with Pandora CTO Tom Conrad describes an approach in which proposed features are assigned a price and planners get a budget to spend on them.

  • The Alternative to Roadmaps, by Marty Cagan. Makes the case for OKRs instead of roadmapping.

 

How To Demo Products

• Recommended Reading:

  • Your Product Demo Sucks Because It's Focused on Your Product (a summary of his book Just F*ing Demo, First Round Review interview of Monetate's Robert Falcone

  • How to Make a Product Demo That Stands Out, by Oscar Santolalla

  • Product Managers and the Product Demo, by Steve Johnson

  • Nine Things Product Managers Should Know About Supporting Sales, oldie, but goodie by Daniel Shefer

 

The One Metric That Matters

• Required Reading:​​

  • The One Metric That Matters by Croll & Yoskovitz (authors of the excellent book Lean Analytics

  • How to Choose the RIght UX Metrics, by Telepathy,GV & Kerry Rodden

  • The Hierarchy of Engagement Expanded by Greylock Partner, Sarah Tavel

  • What does a modern growth stack toolset look like?   

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• Recommended Reading:​

  • Onboardly's Shanelle Mullin offers a beginner's guide to startup marketing analytics (skip down to section titled "How to Use Google Analytics")

  • The Tools Early Stage Startups Need to Understand Their Customers interview of Peter Reinhardt by First Round Review

  • Lean Analytics is a book that looks at key metrics for different business models.