Product Management Learnings

I've been a product manager for over a year now. I'd like to think I've learned a lot along the way. I want to document that journey to date and into the future.

It's the inaugural issue of the newsletter. I'm kicking this one off with a bunch of books that I've read plus a couple articles to boot. Expect more of the same in future newsletters. If you have any article suggestions, feel free to ping me on Twitter at @snookca or via email at jonathan@snook.ca. Thanks for following along!

The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth eBook

The Innovator's Solution is much more technical than I expected and does a great job of breaking down what's needed to avoid "the innovator's dilemma".

The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market eBook: Michael Treacy, Fred Wiersema: Kindle Store

This book is a great companion piece to The Innovator's Solution. This book is older, having been written near the end of the 1990s. It's also not as technical of a book as The Innovator's Solution. However, there's plenty of good useful bits to frame where where I work now (Shopify) to the concepts outlined in the book.

Book: Lean Analytics

Part of the Lean series, Lean Analytics teaches you to "Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster". Useful for determining what metrics to track and determining your KPI.

Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech's Hottest Products

"I don't see the PM's job as having all the product ideas. I see it as keeping the engineering and design teams firing on all cylinders." There's so many useful bits in this lengthy article that speak to the heart of product management.

But what IS the Minimum Lovable Product?

Despite the title, the article mostly focuses on how to rapidly prioritize stories and using that to figure out what the minimum "lovable" product is.

Published April 17, 2014
Categorized as Product Management
Short URL: https://snook.ca/s/1031

Conversation

2 Comments · RSS feed
Johan said on April 26, 2014

Do you use Agile methodologies? What are your experience with SCRUM so far.

Jonathan Snook said on April 27, 2014

Many of the teams within Shopify follow a methodology closer to Agile. The team I work with is looser than that. We have a weekly meeting to discuss progress, blockers, and priorities. I work amongst the team to help stay on top of things throughout the week and be available to answer questions as the product owner.

Sorry, comments are closed for this post. If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to send them to me directly.