Tying it All Together
Episode #10 of the course Intro to Product Management by Ellen Chisa
In the last nine days, we’ve covered nine big areas:
1. What a PM isn’t
2. What a PM is
3. How to talk to your users
4. How to think about what your customers will pay for
5. Making tradeoffs between the two
6. Generating technical respect
7. Launching your product
8. Metrics and evaluation
9. Vision and strategy
This is just a starting point for understanding some of what Product Managers do every day. While each of these skills is important, Product Managers have to weave them together in unique ways.
First, no one tells the Product Manager which of these spaces they should be looking at. Each day, the Product Manager has to decide where to spend their time. Do they need to talk to users to learn? Do they need to see if people are paying? Does everyone internally have the same vision?
Second, none of these pieces are done in isolation. The PM is rarely alone. Instead, they’re meeting with users and internal stakeholders to get these pieces accomplished. The PM may not do all the user interviews—they may do some, but then they make time for everyone else in the company to meet users, too.
Both of these skills come with practice. It’s hard to learn how to dedicate your time, and who to be talking to, until you’ve gotten accustomed to the environment. This is why so many Product Managers say it can take up to 90 days to get up to speed in a new job—no matter how much experience you have.
Where you go from here is up to you. There are many books, resources, and classes to learn more about Product Management as a whole and go broader. There are also ways to jump into each skill specifically, diving deeper into one topic area. You could spend time applying these skills in your current working environment. No matter which way you decide to go, best of luck!
This course was created by Ellen Chisa
Sign up for Ellen’s Product Management class on Skillshare
to practice these fundamentals using your own side project
(and see an example!)
Recommended resource
Recommended book
“Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal
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