Breaking into product management
It's not as hard as it may appear
I’m really enjoying my weekly conversations with folks. So many fun topics and often conversations that push me in great directions. In the last few weeks, I believe we’ve crossed 10 hours of conversations!
One of the topics that has come up is how do you break into product management. It’s unfortunate that I hear a fair share of almost non-sensical things that folks are getting as advice - like get an MBA, spend a few thousand dollars on a course, or it’s too late/hard to become a product manager.
So, based on my experience and how I help my team, I’ll share my thoughts on this.
At the core of a product manager are 2 primary things - curiosity and a drive to take action. So, start there - do you get excited thinking about customer problems and how you could solve them? Are you constantly thinking about various types of problems with the status quo? It’s almost like that scene from the Matrix when Neo sees the Matrix code everywhere :) Great product managers are like that - they see customer problems and business opportunities eeeeeeverywhere.
The second part is how do you put that curiosity and drive into action that leads to helping your customers and building a viable business. There is a lot of noise in those problems, opportunities and solutions unless you put some structure to it. For that, I recommend reading just 2 books (that you can borrow from your local library). IMO these are enough to get you started and to grow in product management. You would be surprised after you read these books how many people who are in product management don’t do these basic things correctly.
If you have to pick an order, I recommend reading them in the order listed.
The last part then is just applying your curiosity, drive and the structure you have learnt to something real - nothing beats real experience. Start by looking for opportunities within your company - can you shadow a product team for a few sprints? Or can you pick up one or more things that doesn’t have PM headcount right now - trust me your head of product is always looking for “free” help. It is going to be way simpler and effective to do that in the current company since you know the business, the customers, the problems, the product, etc.
Hope this was helpful in helping you get started and it makes you believe that it isn’t as daunting as it may appear.
If you want to discuss your personal situation, feel free to grab time with me here. As always it is completely free.