A lot has been written on Medium about product management. A lot. You only have to do a search for product management or view all the posts tagged with product management to get an idea of the huge volume of knowledge available.
To help sift through all the noise, I’ve collected the 18 most liked (well, clapped) articles that are directly focused on the subject.
The First Principles of Product Management
Jan. 2018, 17.2k claps
Top highlight:
Customer signals are the qualitative and quantitative data sets you accumulate on how customers are using the product. This data is the “ping” from the goal, and when you hear that ping get stronger, you know you aren’t veering too far off course.
Product Management Mental Models for Everyone
Aug. 2018, 17k claps
Top highlight:
Most teams tend to work forwards, which optimizes for what is practical at the cost of what’s ultimately impactful.
Let’s talk about Product Management
Oct. 2015, 12.1k claps
Top highlight:
But I always felt product management was one of the most important functions that when done well, helps make companies and products much better, and when done badly, can really hurt a company and team.
How To Get Into Product Management (And Thrive) ✨
May 2019, 10.4k claps
Top highlight:
A good strategy is a set of actions that is credible, coherent, and focused on overcoming the biggest hurdle(s) in achieving a particular objective.
Changing the Conversation about Product Management vs. UX
Product Management with no User Experience Design creates functional products that don’t make users excited. User Experience Design with no Product Mana
Jan. 2016, 8k claps
Top highlight:
Product Management with no User Experience Design creates functional products that don’t make users excited. User Experience Design with no Product Management produces delightful products that don’t become businesses.
Observations on Product Management
Dec. 2017, 6k claps
Top highlight:
Being data-driven is not vision. People who cling to being data-driven rarely create anything new or interesting. I also personally find it hard to explain why to them.
6 diagrams I use to explain Product Management concepts
Dec. 2019, 6k claps
Top highlight:
Great Product Managers know when to be involved and when to step back. They know when to let conversations happen without them. The purpose of an autonomous team is to remove as many dependencies as possible.
The Past and Future of Product Management
Nov. 2015, 5.8k claps
Top highlight:
But the job of a product manager isn’t to understand analytics, it is to understand customers.
The Black Box of Product Management
Nov. 2015, 5.7k claps
Top highlight:
I view modern product development as a system of interconnected disciplines, working in a network, to deliver on a user’s desire. Product managers are the API that facilitates communication in this network.
The Myths of Product Management
Feb. 2016, 3.6k claps
Top highlight (on the myth that PMs don’t know what they do):
No, YOU don’t know what they do. They know what they do, they do everything.
The most important thing Dropbox did to scale Product Management
Jan. 2017, 2.7k claps
Top highlight:
It’s hard for me understate the importance of getting agreement on the problem you’re trying to solve before beginning work on the solution, particularly once there are many stakeholders from different parts of the business.
3 Types of Product Management: Which One is Right For Your Company?
Jan. 2016, 2.3k claps
Top highlight:
Good product managers somewhat amorphously bridge the gaps that exist between other functional areas working toward a product’s success.
Product Management Lessons: How Medium replacing ❤️ with 👏 has made the product much worse
Aug. 2017, 1.8k claps
Top highlight (on how claps mean you now have to grade how much you liked a post):
It actually now turns what should be a lightweight and fun experience into somewhat of a cognitive load on end users.
50 Things I’ve Learned About Product Management
Dec. 2016, 1.1k claps
Top highlight:
Without a strong product vision, you’ll end up outsourcing product strategy to the rest of the company.
The Three Jobs of Product Management
Sep. 2016, 740 claps
Top highlight:
Part of your job as a PM is tell people to talk to each other.
Product Management from First Principles
Aug. 2017, 590 claps
Top highlight:
To learn is to read, to understand is to write, and to master is to teach.
Product Management for the Enterprise
Mar. 2016, 580 claps
Top highlight (on the difference between customers and users):
Literally no one likes to use Lotus Notes. Truly, it is a horrible piece of software. Yet guess what? It’s still a one billion dollar business for IBM.
Demystifying product management
Jul. 2017, 480 claps
Top highlight:
Wouldn’t your product’s chances of success increase if you enlisted every customer-facing colleague as a user researcher… an extension of the product team itself?
Product Management 2.0: A Growth Story
Oct. 2016, 450 claps
Top highlight (KRs = key results):
Features are merely tactics to achieve your KRs.
Hacking Your Product Management Career
Aug. 2017, (415 claps)
Top highlight:
The main advice I would give to my “younger self?” Be bold.
The Product Management Hierarchy of Needs
Sep. 2017, 400 claps
Top highlight (on why ideas must be viable):
Successful products can come from seemingly nonexistent problems e.g. over 75 million Tamagotchis have been sold ‘just for fun’, but remember, it’s harder to sell a vitamin than a painkiller.
Why is product management hard?
Jun. 2017, 380 claps
Notable quote:
Product managers must ensure their products solve a significant need for a sufficiently large group of people in a way that’s better (or less costly) than existing alternatives.
Hey Christian,
I just stumbled upon this cool post and wanted this article into the mix (1.1k claps). It is an open sourced career-framework for product managers allowing everyone to have more intentional development journeys.
https://medium.com/forto-tech-blog/the-product-management-skill-book-fefdf118270
(Disclaimer, I wrote the article)