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| director of product management skills: Product Management in Practice Matt LeMay, 2017-11-08 Product management has become a critical connective role for modern organizations, from small technology startups to global corporate enterprises. And yet the day-to-day work of product management remains largely misunderstood. In theory, product management is about building products that people love. The real-world practice of product management is often about difficult conversations, practical compromises, and hard-won incremental gains. In this book, author Matt LeMay focuses on the CORE connective skills— communication, organization, research, execution—that can build a successful product management practice across industries, organizations, teams, andtoolsets. For current and aspiring product managers, this book explores:? On-the-ground tactics for facilitating collaboration and communication? How to talk to users and work with executives? The importance of setting clear and actionable goals? Using roadmaps to connect and align your team? A values-first approach to implementing Agile practices? Common behavioral traps that turn good product managers bad |
| director of product management skills: Product Leadership Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, Nate Walkingshaw, 2017-05-12 In today’s lightning-fast technology world, good product management is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage. Yet, managing human beings and navigating complex product roadmaps is no easy task, and it’s rare to find a product leader who can steward a digital product from concept to launch without a couple of major hiccups. Why do some product leaders succeed while others don’t? This insightful book presents interviews with nearly 100 leading product managers from all over the world. Authors Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, and Nate Walkingshaw draw on decades of experience in product design and development to capture the approaches, styles, insights, and techniques of successful product managers. If you want to understand what drives good product leaders, this book is an irreplaceable resource. In three parts, Product Leadership helps you explore: Themes and patterns of successful teams and their leaders, and ways to attain those characteristics Best approaches for guiding your product team through the startup, emerging, and enterprise stages of a company’s evolution Strategies and tactics for working with customers, agencies, partners, and external stakeholders |
| director of product management skills: Lost and Founder Rand Fishkin, 2024-05-14 Rand Fishkin, the founder and former CEO of Moz, reveals how traditional Silicon Valley wisdom leads far too many startups astray, with the transparency and humor that his hundreds of thousands of blog readers have come to love. Everyone knows how a startup story is supposed to go: A young, brilliant entrepreneur has a cool idea, drops out of college, defies the doubters, overcomes all odds, makes billions, and becomes the envy of the technology world. This is not that story. It's not that things went badly for Rand Fishkin; they just weren't quite so Zuckerberg-esque. His company, Moz, maker of marketing software, is now a $45 million/year business, and he's one of the world's leading experts on SEO. But his business and reputation took fifteen years to grow, and his startup began not in a Harvard dorm room but as a mother-and-son family business that fell deeply into debt. Now Fishkin pulls back the curtain on tech startup mythology, exposing the ups and downs of startup life that most CEOs would rather keep secret. For instance: A minimally viable product can be destructive if you launch at the wrong moment. Growth hacking may be the buzzword du jour, but initiatives can fizzle quickly. Revenue and growth won't protect you from layoffs. And venture capital always comes with strings attached. Fishkin's hard-won lessons are applicable to any kind of business environment. Up or down the chain of command, at both early stage startups and mature companies, whether your trajectory is riding high or down in the dumps: this book can help solve your problems, and make you feel less alone for having them. |
| director of product management skills: The Practice of Management Peter Drucker, 2012-07-26 This classic volume achieves a remarkable width of appeal without sacrificing scientific accuracy or depth of analysis. It is a valuable contribution to the study of business efficiency which should be read by anyone wanting information about the developments and place of management, and it is as relevant today as when it was first written. This is a practical book, written out of many years of experience in working with managements of small, medium and large corporations. It aims to be a management guide, enabling readers to examine their own work and performance, to diagnose their weaknesses and to improve their own effectiveness as well as the results of the enterprise they are responsible for. |
| director of product management skills: EMPOWERED Marty Cagan, 2020-12-03 Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people. Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams-- |
| director of product management skills: Product Management Essentials Aswin Pranam, 2017-12-12 Gain all of the techniques, teachings, tools, and methodologies required to be an effective first-time product manager. The overarching goal of this book is to help you understand the product manager role, give you concrete examples of what a product manager does, and build the foundational skill-set that will gear you towards a career in product management. To be an effective PM in the tech industry, you need to have a basic understanding of technology. In this book you’ll get your feet wet by exploring the skills a PM needs in their toolset and cover enough ground to make you feel comfortable in a technical discussion. A PM is not expected to have the same level of depth or knowledge as a software engineer, but knowing enough to continue the conversation can be a benefit in your career in product management. A complete product manager will have a 360-degree understanding of user experience and how to craft beautiful products that are easy-to-use, with the end user in mind. You’ll continue your journey with a walk through basic UX principles and even go through the process of building a simple set of UI frames for a mock app. Aside from the technical and design expertise, a PM needs to master the social aspects of the role. Acting as a bridge between engineering, marketing, and other teams can be difficult, and this book will dive into the business and soft skills of product management. After reading Product Management Essentials you will be one of a select few technically-capable PMs who can interface with management, stakeholders, customers, and the engineering team. What You Will Learn Gain the traits of a successful PM from industry PMs, VCs, and other professionals See the day-to-day responsibilities of a PM and how the role differs across tech companies Absorb the technical knowledge necessary to interface with engineers and estimate timelines Design basic mocks, high-fidelity wireframes, and fully polished user interfaces Create core documents and handle business interactions Who This Book Is For Individuals who are eyeing a transition into a PM role or have just entered a PM role at a new organization for the first time. They currently hold positions as a software engineer, marketing manager, UX designer, or data analyst and want to move away from a feature-focused view to a high-level strategic view of the product vision. |
| director of product management skills: The Secret Product Manager Handbook Nils Davis, 2018-03-05 Product management isn't about you and it isn't about your product. It's about solving problems for your customers, creating a solution, and taking it to market. When I started in product management, I had a lot of questions, like What is product management? It's a common question still, but most people don't have a good answer. After all these years, the same questions keep coming up. I see them on forums, I hear them when I talk to new and experienced product managers, and I still do not see them being answered well or usefully. So I wrote this book, with the answers to the questions I always had. You'll learn: The real reason people choose to buy a product - it's not about how good the product is! How to get the very best from your developers. The 5-word phrase that can accelerate sales and marketing. The best ways to talk to executives and customers about what you're building. Among other critical information, you'll find a powerful framework for thinking about product management - and even for talking to your Mom about what you do. The framework provides an infrastructure for most of The Secret Product Manager Handbook. I provide a concrete and explicit explanation of why product management is so important for businesses, including a calculation of the true business value of product management. And the book is full of specific techniques and practices for transforming your product management career. What People Are Saying Nuggets of product management wisdom and ideas you'll want to hang on your monitor. The book is like having a conversation with a mentor. (Ken Hanson, Growth Product Manager) The summary of product management - identify market problems, guide the creation of solutions, and take the solutions to market - is powerful. As a former engineer, it's especially important to be reminded of the third point (Frank Licea, Product Manager) The intro is one of the clearest and smartest explanations of the value a product manager should bring to the table I've ever read. (Luca Candela, VP of Product Management) |
| director of product management skills: Product Management For Dummies Brian Lawley, Pamela Schure, 2017-01-24 Your one-stop guide to becoming a product management prodigy Product management plays a pivotal role in organizations. In fact, it's now considered the fourth most important title in corporate America—yet only a tiny fraction of product managers have been trained for this vital position. If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people who hold this essential job—or simply aspire to break into a new role—Product Management For Dummies gives you the tools to increase your skill level and manage products like a pro. From defining what product management is—and isn't—to exploring the rising importance of product management in the corporate world, this friendly and accessible guide quickly gets you up to speed on everything it takes to thrive in this growing field. It offers plain-English explanations of the product life cycle, market research, competitive analysis, market and pricing strategy, product roadmaps, the people skills it takes to effectively influence and negotiate, and so much more. Create a winning strategy for your product Gather and analyze customer and market feedback Prioritize and convey requirements to engineering teams effectively Maximize revenues and profitability Product managers are responsible for so much more than meets the eye—and this friendly, authoritative guide lifts the curtain on what it takes to succeed. |
| director of product management skills: Cracking the PM Career Jackie Bavaro, Gayle Laakmann McDowell, 2022-04 Product management is a big role, and this is a big book. This comprehensive guide teaches new PMs and experienced PMs the skills, frameworks, and practices to become great product managers. ?Product skills: Drive better product decisions by conducting user research, performing data analysis, prototyping, writing product docs, and understanding technology.?Execution skills: Run your team well and deliver your projects quickly, smoothly, and effectively with project management, incremental development, launch processes, and good time management.?Strategic skills: Set a better direction for your team and optimize for long-term impact with vision, strategy, roadmapping, and team goals. Learn what it means to be more strategic.?Leadership skills: Lead more effectively by developing your personal mindset, collaboration, communication, inspiration, and mentorship skills.?People management: Learn leadership skills for managers, including coaching, recruiting, interviewing, and creating organizational structures.?Careers: Navigate your career by understanding the career ladder, setting goals, and translating your accomplishments into advancement. |
| director of product management skills: The Influential Product Manager Ken Sandy, 2020-01-14 This book is a comprehensive and practical guide to the core skills, activities, and behaviors that are required of product managers in modern technology companies. Product management is one of the fastest growing and most sought-after roles by job seekers and companies alike. The availability of trained and experienced talent can barely keep up with the accelerating demand for new and improved technology products. People from nontechnical and technical backgrounds alike are eager to master this exciting new role. The Influential Product Manager teaches product managers how to behave at each stage of the product life cycle to achieve the best outcome for the customer. Product managers are under pressure to drive spectacular results, often without wielding much direct power or authority. If you don't know how to influence people at all levels of the organization, how will you create the best possible product? This comprehensive entry-level textbook distills over twenty years of hard-won field experience and industry knowledge into lessons that will empower new product managers to act like pros right out of the gate. With teaching experience both from UC Berkeley and Lynda.com, the author boils down the most complex topics into principles that are easy to memorize and apply. This book methodically documents the tools product managers everywhere use to align their teams with market needs and organizational goals. From setting priorities to capturing requirements to navigating trade-offs, this book makes it easy. Not only will your product succeed, you'll succeed, too, when you read the final chapter on advancing your career. Let your product's success become your success! |
| director of product management skills: 42 Rules of Product Management (2nd Edition) Brian Lawley, 2012 42 Rules of Product Management is a collection of product management wisdom from forty experts from around the world. The goal of this book is to expose you to the wisdom and knowledge from a group of the world's leading product management experts. Among the contributors, there are leading authors, professors, CEOs and vice presidents, bloggers, consultants, trainers, and even a few salespeople and engineers. In total, there are over five centuries of collected wisdom represented here. The contributors each share one rule they think is critical to succeed in product management based on their hands-on product management and product marketing experience with companies such as Apple, eBay, Intuit, SAP, and Yahoo! |
| director of product management skills: How to Lead in Product Management: Practices to Align Stakeholders, Guide Development Teams, and Create Value Together Roman Pichler, 2020-03-10 This book will help you become a better product leader. Benefitting from Roman Pichler's extensive experience, you will learn how to align stakeholders and guide development teams even in challenging circumstances, avoid common leadership mistakes, and grow as a leader. Written in an engaging and easily accessible style, How to Lead in Product Management offers a wealth of practical tips and strategies. Through helpful examples, the book illustrates how you can directly apply the techniques to your work. Coverage includes: * Choosing the right leadership style * Cultivating empathy, building trust, and influencing others * Increasing your authority and empowering others * Directing stakeholders and development teams through common goals * Making decisions that people will support and follow through * Successfully resolving disputes and conflicts even with senior stakeholders * Listening deeply to discover and address hidden needs and interests * Practising mindfulness and embracing a growth mindset to develop as a leader Praise for How to Lead in Product Management: Roman has done it again, delivering a practical book for the product management community that appeals to both heart and mind. How to Lead in Product Management is packed with concise, direct, and practical advice that addresses the deeper, personal aspects of the product leadership. Roman's book shares wisdom on topics including goals, healthy interactions with stakeholders, handling conflict, effective conversations, decision-making, having a growth mindset, and self-care. It is a must read for both new and experienced product people. ~Ellen Gottesdiener, Product Coach at EBG Consulting Being a great product manager is tough. It requires domain knowledge, industry knowledge, technical skills, but also the skills to lead and inspire a team. Roman Pichler's How to Lead in Product Management is the best book I've read for equipping product managers to lead their teams. ~Mike Cohn, Author of Succeeding with Agile, Agile Estimating and Planning, and User Stories Applied This is the book that has been missing for product people. Roman has created another masterpiece, a fast read with lots of value. It's a must read for every aspiring product manager. ~Magnus Billgren, CEO of Tolpagorni Product Management How Lead in Product Management is for everyone who manages a product or drives important business decisions. Roman lays out the key challenges of product leadership and shows us ways of thoughtfully working with team members, stakeholders, partners, and the inevitable conflicts. ~Rich Mironov, CEO of Mironov Consulting and Smokejumper Head of Product |
| director of product management skills: The Practitioner's Guide to Product Management General Assembly, Jock Busuttil, 2015-01-06 This firsthand road map will tell you what it takes to create a product that meets a customer's needs -- and avoid the pitfalls of product failure. Did you cut through traffic on your Segway today? Cool off with a delicious can of New Coke? Relax at home while listening to some music on your Zune? Despite years of research, countless products like these see high-profile launches, only to end up failing to connect with an audience. The Practitioner's Guide to Product Management will help you create a lasting product and take you through the field of product management with candid stories and a litany of real-world experiences. |
| director of product management skills: Hiring Product Managers Kate Leto, 2020-08-31 For many in Product Management, success comes from mastery of tools like roadmaps, MVPs, strategy frameworks and OKRs. These and other technical skills describe what a product person does to design, build and support new complex technologies for our users. But as technologies quickly become ubiquitous, it's the human approach to creativity, innovation, decision-making, and leadership that makes the difference in whether an individual, team, product, and even organization is successful or not. These human skills describe how a product person works and must go hand-in-hand with the technical skills.Through the story of a new director of product's missteps as he and his team try to hire their way to become a thriving product organisation at a global financial services firm, the author pulls from her experience in product management, org design and leadership coaching to introduce practical tools that will change not only how an organisation hires, but how they think of a healthy product management culture and essential product skills. Working together, the team begins to understand and grow their Product EQ, and through the easy tools and exercises in this book, so can you.This book is a fantastic catalyst to rethink which skills you need in a product team in order to be truly innovative - and then details exactly how to change both your hiring and coaching practices to foster those skills in your organisation. Martin Eriksson - Co-Author, Product Leadership I loved this book. It pin points the aspects of Product Management we often gloss over, hiring theright people. Kate shows us that human skills are a pre-requisite for all successful product people, notjust technical skills. Follow her advice and approach, and you'll find the right product person for yourproduct team in no time.Adrienne Tan - Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Brainmates |
| director of product management skills: My Product Management Toolkit Marc Abraham, 2018-03-07 Why are some products a hit while others never see the light of day? While there's no foolproof way to tell what will succeed and what won't, every product has a chance as long as it's supported by research, careful planning, and hard work. -Written by successful product manager Marc Abraham, My Product Management Toolkit is a comprehensive guide to developing a physical or digital product that consumers love. Here's a sample of what you'll find within these pages: Strategies for determining what customers want-even when they don't know themselves Clear suggestions for developing both physical and digital products Effective methods to constantly iterate a product or feature Containing wisdom from Abraham's popular blog, this book explores product management from every angle, including consumer analysis, personnel management, and product evolution. Whether you're developing a product for a small start-up or a multinational corporation, this book will prove invaluable. |
| director of product management skills: Escaping the Build Trap Melissa Perri, 2018-11-01 To stay competitive in today’s market, organizations need to adopt a culture of customer-centric practices that focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the build trap, cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs. In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer. You’ll learn product management principles that can be applied to any organization, big or small. In five parts, this book explores: Why organizations ship features rather than cultivate the value those features represent How to set up a product organization that scales How product strategy connects a company’s vision and economic outcomes back to the product activities How to identify and pursue the right opportunities for producing value through an iterative product framework How to build a culture focused on successful outcomes over outputs |
| director of product management skills: High Growth Handbook Elad Gil, 2018-07-17 High Growth Handbook is the playbook for growing your startup into a global brand. Global technology executive, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high-growth tech companies including Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Stripe, and Square as they’ve grown from small companies into global enterprises. Across all of these breakout companies, Gil has identified a set of common patterns and created an accessible playbook for scaling high-growth startups, which he has now codified in High Growth Handbook. In this definitive guide, Gil covers key topics, including: · The role of the CEO · Managing a board · Recruiting and overseeing an executive team · Mergers and acquisitions · Initial public offerings · Late-stage funding. Informed by interviews with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz), and Aaron Levie (Box), High Growth Handbook presents crystal-clear guidance for navigating the most complex challenges that confront leaders and operators in high-growth startups. |
| director of product management skills: Ask a Manager Alison Green, 2018-05-01 'I'm a HUGE fan of Alison Green's Ask a Manager column. This book is even better' Robert Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide 'Ask A Manager is the book I wish I'd had in my desk drawer when I was starting out (or even, let's be honest, fifteen years in)' - Sarah Knight, New York Times bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck A witty, practical guide to navigating 200 difficult professional conversations Ten years as a workplace advice columnist has taught Alison Green that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they don't know what to say. Thankfully, Alison does. In this incredibly helpful book, she takes on the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You'll learn what to say when: · colleagues push their work on you - then take credit for it · you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email and hit 'reply all' · you're being micromanaged - or not being managed at all · your boss seems unhappy with your work · you got too drunk at the Christmas party With sharp, sage advice and candid letters from real-life readers, Ask a Manager will help you successfully navigate the stormy seas of office life. |
| director of product management skills: Zone to Win Geoffrey A. Moore, 2015-11-03 Over the last 25 years, Geoffrey Moore has established himself as one of the most influential high-tech advisors in the world—once prompting Conan O’Brien to ask “Who is Geoffrey Moore and why is he more famous than me?” Following up on the ferociously innovative ESCAPE VELOCITY, which served as the basis for Moore’s consulting work to such companies as Salesforce, Microsoft, and Intel, ZONE TO WIN serves as the companion playbook for his landmark guide, offering a practical manual to address the challenge large enterprises face when they seek to add a new line of business to their established portfolio. Focused on spurring next-generation growth, guiding mergers and acquisitions, and embracing disruption and innovation, ZONE TO WIN is a high-powered tool for driving your company above and beyond its limitations, its definitions of success, and ultimately, its competitors. Moore’s classic bestseller, CROSSING THE CHASM, has sold more than one million copies by addressing the challenges faced by start-up companies. Now ZONE TO WIN is set to guide established enterprises through the same journey. “For any company, regardless of size or industry, ZONE TO WIN is the playbook for succeeding in today’s disruptive, connected, fast-paced business world.” —Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce “Once again Geoffrey Moore weighs in with a prescient examination of what it takes to win in today’s competitive, disruptive business environment.” —Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft With this book, Geoffrey Moore continues to lead us all through ever-changing times...His work has changed the game of changing the game! —Gary Kovacs, CEO, AVG “ZONE TO WIN uses crystal-clear language to describe the management plays necessary to win in an ever-disrupting marketplace. Regardless of your level of management experience, you will find this book an invaluable tool for building long-term success for your business.” —Lip-Bu Tan, President and CEO, Cadence Design Systems |
| director of product management skills: The Product Manager Interview Lewis C. Lin, 2017-11-06 NOTE: This is the NEWER 3rd edition for the book formerly titled PM Interview Questions. -- 164 Actual PM Interview Questions From the creator of the CIRCLES Method(TM), The Product Manager Interview is a resource you don't want to miss. The world's expert in product management interviews, Lewis C. Lin, gives readers 164 practice questions to gain product management (PM) proficiency and master the PM interview including: Google Facebook Amazon Uber Dropbox Microsoft Fully Solved Solutions The book contains fully solved solutions so readers can learn, improve and do their best at the PM interview. Here are questions and sample answers you'll find in the book: Product Design How would you design an ATM for elderly people? Should Google build a Comcast-like TV cable service? Instagram currently supports 3 to 15 second videos. We're considering supporting videos of unlimited length. How would you modify the UX to accommodate this? Pricing How would you go about pricing UberX or any other new Uber product? Let's say Google created a teleporting device: which market segments would you go after? How would you price it? Metrics Imagine you are the Amazon Web Services (AWS) PM in Sydney. What are the top three metrics you'd look at? Facebook users have declined 20 percent week over week. Diagnose the problem. How would you fix the issue? Ideal Complement to Decode and Conquer Many of you have read the PM interview frameworks revealed in Decode and Conquer, including the CIRCLES(TM), AARM(TM) and DIGS(TM) Methods. The Product Manager Interview is the perfect complement to Decode and Conquer. With over 160 practice questions, you'll see what the best PM interview responses look and feel like. Brand New Third Edition Many of the sample answers have been re-written from scratch. The sample answers are now stronger and easier to follow. In total, thousands of changes have made in this brand new third edition of the book. Preferred by the World's Top Universities Here's what students and staff have to say about the Lewis C. Lin: DUKE UNIVERSITY I was so touched by your presentation this morning. It was really helpful. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN I can say your class is the best that I have ever attended. I will definitely use knowledge I learned today for future interviews. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY I'd like to let you know that your workshop today is super awesome! It's the best workshop I have been to since I came to Columbia Business School. Thank you very much for the tips, frameworks, and the very clear and well-structured instruction! UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN I wanted to reiterate how much I enjoyed your workshops today. Thank you so much for taking time out and teaching us about these much-needed principles and frameworks. I actually plan to print out a few slides and paste them on my walls! CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY I'm a very big admirer of your work. We, at Tepper, follow your books like the Bible. As a former associate product manager, I was able to connect your concepts back to my work experience back and Pragmatic Marketing training. I'm really looking forward to apply your teachings. |
| director of product management skills: Managing Product Management: Empowering Your Organization to Produce Competitive Products and Brands Steven Haines, 2011-12-02 Build better products by expanding the role of Product Management Managing Product Management argues that product management should be reinstituted as a key source of innovative ideas that solve broad market problems. It illustrates how to organize the product management function of a company to create, build, and produce innovative and game-changing products and services. Steven Haines is the founder and president of Sequent Learning Networks, a training and advisory services firm with an international client base. He held leadership roles for AT&T and Oracle and was adjunct professor at Rutgers University's business school. |
| director of product management skills: Cracking the PM Interview Gayle Laakmann McDowell, Jackie Bavaro, 2013 How many pizzas are delivered in Manhattan? How do you design an alarm clock for the blind? What is your favorite piece of software and why? How would you launch a video rental service in India? This book will teach you how to answer these questions and more. Cracking the PM Interview is a comprehensive book about landing a product management role in a startup or bigger tech company. Learn how the ambiguously-named PM (product manager / program manager) role varies across companies, what experience you need, how to make your existing experience translate, what a great PM resume and cover letter look like, and finally, how to master the interview: estimation questions, behavioral questions, case questions, product questions, technical questions, and the super important pitch. |
| director of product management skills: The Innovation Mode George Krasadakis, 2020-07-29 This book presents unique insights and advice on defining and managing the innovation transformation journey. Using novel ideas, examples and best practices, it empowers management executives at all levels to drive cultural, technological and organizational changes toward innovation. Covering modern innovation techniques, tools, programs and strategies, it focuses on the role of the latest technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence to discover, handle and manage ideas), methodologies (including Agile Engineering and Rapid Prototyping) and combinations of these (like hackathons or gamification). At the same time, it highlights the importance of culture and provides suggestions on how to build it. In the era of AI and the unprecedented pace of technology evolution, companies need to become truly innovative in order to survive. The transformation toward an innovation-led company is difficult – it requires a strong leadership and culture, advanced technologies and well-designed programs. The book is based on the author’s long-term experience and novel ideas, and reflects two decades of startup, consulting and corporate leadership experience. It is intended for business, technology, and innovation leaders. |
| director of product management skills: The Lean Product Playbook Dan Olsen, 2015-05-21 The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia. Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource. |
| director of product management skills: INSPIRED Marty Cagan, 2017-11-17 How do today’s most successful tech companies—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla—design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than the vast majority of tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love—and that will work for your business. With sections on assembling the right people and skillsets, discovering the right product, embracing an effective yet lightweight process, and creating a strong product culture, readers can take the information they learn and immediately leverage it within their own organizations—dramatically improving their own product efforts. Whether you’re an early stage startup working to get to product/market fit, or a growth-stage company working to scale your product organization, or a large, long-established company trying to regain your ability to consistently deliver new value for your customers, INSPIRED will take you and your product organization to a new level of customer engagement, consistent innovation, and business success. Filled with the author’s own personal stories—and profiles of some of today’s most-successful product managers and technology-powered product companies, including Adobe, Apple, BBC, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix—INSPIRED will show you how to turn up the dial of your own product efforts, creating technology products your customers love. The first edition of INSPIRED, published ten years ago, established itself as the primary reference for technology product managers, and can be found on the shelves of nearly every successful technology product company worldwide. This thoroughly updated second edition shares the same objective of being the most valuable resource for technology product managers, yet it is completely new—sharing the latest practices and techniques of today’s most-successful tech product companies, and the men and women behind every great product. |
| director of product management skills: You Vivek Bedi, 2020-04-03 Product management is one of the most in-demand jobs in today's market. But few people are formally trained for this line of work-and those who are don't find out what it really takes to succeed until they are confronted with the obstacles mentioned in this book. If you're a product manager-or would like to pivot into product whether from business, consulting, project management, or engineering-this book is for you. Here, the author gets real about the kind of person you need to be to build better products and do well in this role. You will learn: - How to get your team, leadership, and customers on board with your vision. - How to say no and push back to customers! - Deciphering smart data from the dumb so that you don't lead your product down a dark alleyway. - Navigate politics and making hard decisions but still being respected. - Plus workbook exercises to help you prepare ahead for some of the challenges on the job! - And much more... With more than 18 years of experience in product management and leadership, Vivek Bedi shares his personal (and oftentimes embarrassing) stories about falling on the job so that you don't have to make the same mistakes. His extensive work in Fortune 100 companies, startups and launching his own venture that was acquired, has helped shape his definition of what a product manager is and the skills required to be an effective one. He is the founder of Product Immersion, full-day training workshops for product managers, and is a keynote speaker at flagship product conferences around the country. Much like a product, the author invites readers to share their lessons learned in product management to continue to iterate on and improve the book with each release. |
| director of product management skills: Turn Ideas Into Products Steve Johnson, 2017-04-02 We've all heard stories of amazing product successes: the brilliant college kid who started a business in his dorm room; the team who built a business from the back of a napkin with just a few friends and sold it for millions. Yet for every amazing success story, there are thousands of stories of products that went nowhere. Most of us aren't looking at billion-dollar valuations; we're not looking for an exit. Instead we have a few ideas -- some innovative, some not -- and we're trying to determine which to pursue. Likely, you're working for a company today and you need a step-by-step approach to turn ideas, regardless of their source, into businesses. In Turn Ideas into Products, author Steve Johnson introduces a nimble idea-to-market process with strong emphasis on personal experience with customers. From business planning to product launch, this approach for managing products empowers your product team to work smarter and collaborate better with colleagues and customers. |
| director of product management skills: Introduction to Business Lawrence J. Gitman, Carl McDaniel, Amit Shah, Monique Reece, Linda Koffel, Bethann Talsma, James C. Hyatt, 2024-09-16 Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond. This is an adaptation of Introduction to Business by OpenStax. You can access the textbook as pdf for free at openstax.org. Minor editorial changes were made to ensure a better ebook reading experience. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. |
| director of product management skills: Strong Product People Petra Wille, 2020-12-11 Are you a product leader looking for advice on how to be certain that every product manager on your team lives up to their full potential? Do you want to make sure your product people are competent, empowered, and inspired, and would you like to know how you can best help them on this journey? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you! By the end of this book, you will understand: - Why you need to focus on the personal development of every product manager-and of the team as a whole-to unlock their full potential. - Why coaching is an important part of your job, and how to do it in the most effective way. - How you can define what a good product manager looks like. - How you can accurately assess product managers and provide them with valuable, actionable, and helpful feedback on their current performance that will help them perform even better. - Which methods/frameworks you can use to make sure product managers learn what they need to know to be more effective-enhancing their people skills. And you will be able to: - Reflect on your own coaching personality and define your own areas for development. - Efficiently prepare and use one-on-ones as your main coaching tool. |
| director of product management skills: Building Products for the Enterprise Blair Reeves, Benjamin Gaines, 2018-03-09 If you’re new to software product management or just want to learn more about it, there’s plenty of advice available—but most of it is geared toward consumer products. Creating high-quality software for the enterprise involves a much different set of challenges. In this practical book, two expert product managers provide straightforward guidance for people looking to join the thriving enterprise market. Authors Blair Reeves and Benjamin Gaines explain critical differences between enterprise and consumer products, and deliver strategies for overcoming challenges when building for the enterprise. You’ll learn how to cultivate knowledge of your organization, the products you build, and the industry you serve. Explore why: Identifying customer vs user problems is an enterprise project manager’s main challenge Effective collaboration requires in-depth knowledge of the organization Analyzing data is key to understanding why users buy and retain your product Having experience in the industry you’re building products for is valuable Product longevity depends on knowing where the industry is headed |
| director of product management skills: The Art of Product Management Rich Mironov, 2008 The Art of Product Management takes us inside the head of a product management thought leader. With color and humor, Rich Mironov gives us a taste of Silicon Valley's tireless pursuit of great technology and its creation of new products. He provides strategic advice to product managers and tech professionals about start-ups, big organizations, how to think like a customer, and what things should cost. He also reminds us to love our products and our teams. The Art of Product Management brings together the best insights from more than seven years of Product Bytes, Rich Mironov's long-running series on product strategy, technology companies, and how the two interact. This collection is for everyone who builds or markets the next new thing.This is more a how to think about products book than how to templates. Product managers (and others who are deeply committed to great products) will recognize themselves and their daily process struggles. How do I think about customers and solutions? Why does my organization behave the way it does? Can I help others to think long-term, or do I need to think for them? This book captures the inner life of product champions. |
| director of product management skills: Product Management 101 Linda Gorchels, 2017-02-02 Are you ready to skip the dizzying detail of 400-page books? Want the nitty-gritty on product management in short, readable pieces? Product Management 101 is the book one of the Product Management ShortRead Series. It covers the landscape of the job of non-software product managers. Learn what types of companies hire product managers and how to think through the application and interview process. Gain tips on firefighting and improving competencies. Consider three metaphors for the job of product manager and learn the three core principles. And don't skip the last chapter. It contains self-reflection questions to assess how comfortable you are with common aspects of the job. It ends with recommended resources to improve your skills. |
| director of product management skills: The Product Book: How to Become a Great Product Manager Product School, Josh Anon, 2017-05 Nobody asked you to show up. Every experienced product manager has heard some version of those words at some point in their career. Think about a company. Engineers build the product. Designers make sure it has a great user experience and looks good. Marketing makes sure customers know about the product. Sales get potential customers to open their wallets to buy the product. What more does a company need? What does a product manager do? Based upon Product School's curriculum, which has helped thousands of students become great product managers, The Product Book answers that question. Filled with practical advice, best practices, and expert tips, this book is here to help you succeed! |
| director of product management skills: Agile Product Management with Scrum Roman Pichler, 2010-03-11 The First Guide to Scrum-Based Agile Product Management In Agile Product Management with Scrum, leading Scrum consultant Roman Pichler uses real-world examples to demonstrate how product owners can create successful products with Scrum. He describes a broad range of agile product management practices, including making agile product discovery work, taking advantage of emergent requirements, creating the minimal marketable product, leveraging early customer feedback, and working closely with the development team. Benefitting from Pichler’s extensive experience, you’ll learn how Scrum product ownership differs from traditional product management and how to avoid and overcome the common challenges that Scrum product owners face. Coverage includes Understanding the product owner’s role: what product owners do, how they do it, and the surprising implications Envisioning the product: creating a compelling product vision to galvanize and guide the team and stakeholders Grooming the product backlog: managing the product backlog effectively even for the most complex products Planning the release: bringing clarity to scheduling, budgeting, and functionality decisions Collaborating in sprint meetings: understanding the product owner’s role in sprint meetings, including the dos and don’ts Transitioning into product ownership: succeeding as a product owner and establishing the role in the enterprise This book is an indispensable resource for anyone who works as a product owner, or expects to do so, as well as executives and coaches interested in establishing agile product management. |
| director of product management skills: Managing Change in Organizations Project Management Institute, 2013-08-01 Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide is unique in that it integrates two traditionally disparate world views on managing change: organizational development/human resources and portfolio/program/project management. By bringing these together, professionals from both worlds can use project management approaches to effectively create and manage change. This practice guide begins by providing the reader with a framework for creating organizational agility and judging change readiness. |
| director of product management skills: Design for How People Think John Whalen Ph.D., 2019-04-05 User experience doesn’t happen on a screen; it happens in the mind, and the experience is multidimensional and multisensory. This practical book will help you uncover critical insights about how your customers think so you can create products or services with an exceptional experience. Corporate leaders, marketers, product owners, and designers will learn how cognitive processes from different brain regions form what we perceive as a singular experience. Author John Whalen shows you how anyone on your team can conduct contextual interviews to unlock insights. You’ll then learn how to apply that knowledge to design brilliant experiences for your customers. Learn about the six minds of user experience and how each contributes to the perception of a singular experience Find out how your team—without any specialized training in psychology—can uncover critical insights about your customers’ conscious and unconscious processes Learn how to immediately apply what you’ve learned to improve your products and services Explore practical examples of how the Fortune 100 used this system to build highly successful experiences |
| director of product management skills: Swipe to Unlock Neel Mehta, Parth Detroja, Aditya Agashe, 2017 WANT A NON-CODING JOB AT A TECH COMPANY? Interested in product management, marketing, strategy, or business development? The tech industry is the place to be: nontechnical employees at tech companies outnumber their engineering counterparts almost 3 to 1 (Forbes, 2017). You might be worried that your lack of coding skills or tech industry knowledge will hold you back. But here's the secret: you don't need to learn how to code to break into the tech industry. Written by three former Microsoft PMs, Swipe to Unlock gives you a breakdown of the concepts you need to know to crush your interviews, like software development, big data, and internet security. We'll explain how Google's ad targeting algorithm works, but Google probably won't ask you how to explain it in a non-technical interview. But they might ask you how you could increase ad revenue from a particular market segment. And if you know how Google's ad platform works, you'll be in a far stronger position to come up with good growth strategies. We'll show you how Robinhood, an app that lets you trade stocks without commission, makes money by earning interest on the unspent money that users keep in their accounts. No one will ask you to explain this. But if someone asks you to come up with a new monetization strategy for Venmo (which lets you send and receive money without fees), you could pull out the Robinhood anecdote to propose that Venmo earn interest off the money sitting in users' accounts. We'll talk about some business cases like why Microsoft acquired LinkedIn. Microsoft interviewers probably won't ask you about the motive of the purchase, but they might ask you for ideas to improve Microsoft Outlook. From our case study, you'll learn how the Microsoft and LinkedIn ecosystems could work together, which can help you craft creative, impactful answers. You could propose that Outlook use LinkedIn's social graph to give salespeople insights about clients before meeting them. Or you could suggest linking Outlook's organizational tree to LinkedIn to let HR managers analyze their company's hierarchy and figure out what kind of talent they need to add. (We'll further explore both ideas in the book.) Either way, you're sure to impress. Learn the must know concepts of tech from authors who have received job offers for Facebook's Rotational Product Manager, Google's Associate Product Marketing Manager, and Microsoft's Program Manager to get a competitive edge at your interviews! |
| director of product management skills: Product Management Ishrat Nadeem Zahid, 2013 Product management is a demanding but exciting career. The product manager's challenges are unending, his responsibilities are rigorous, and what he does, has direct impact on a company's financial performance. Building and launching new products and turning an idea from a piece of paper into a functional product is almost a miracle. In addition, the product manager manages the product throughout its life. In doing so, the product manager deals with pretty much every function in the company. Speaking of the product life, anything done well during the planning phase will pay off during the other phases of the product life cycle. The execution phase is the phase when a product really takes shape. Once the product is complete and ready to be launched, it is an exciting time for the product manager. The product is ready to put under real-world test. Just building and launching a product is not enough. Target customers should be told about how great a product is, which takes good marketing and evangelism. Market routes must be established to sell and promote the product and make business out of it. Additionally, different types of services can be defined to be attached with the product as an overall offering. Defining and implementing a go-to-market plan for the product is complicated but interesting set of activities. If the go-to-market ecosystem is set up well, the product manager can watch his product's and associated services' revenues multiply. Once the product is out there, it needs to be taken care of. Sustaining a product takes effort. This is the time to turn a good product into a great product to take the product toward completeness and maturity. Eventually, any product will get old and obsolete. Even the greatest of products must be given a farewell, and the end of life must happen to keep the innovation wheel rotating. New products and services enter the picture, and the product management action starts all over again. |
| director of product management skills: The Product Manager's Toolkit® Gabriel Steinhardt, 2017-05-15 This book provides a consistent and holistic managerial approach to product management and presents a practical and comprehensive methodology (roles, processes, tasks, and deliverables) that covers all aspects of product management. It helps students of product management, product management practitioners, product management organizations, and corporations understand the value, theory, and implementation of product management. It outlines a practical approach to clarify role definitions, identify responsibilities, define processes and deliverables, and improve the ability to communicate with stakeholders. The book details the fundamentals of the Blackblot Product Manager's Toolkit® (PMTK) product management methodology, a globally adopted best practice. |
| director of product management skills: Decode and Conquer Lewis C. Lin, 2013-11-28 Land that Dream Product Manager Job...TODAYSeeking a product management position?Get Decode and Conquer, the world's first book on preparing you for the product management (PM) interview. Author and professional interview coach, Lewis C. Lin provides you with an industry insider's perspective on how to conquer the most difficult PM interview questions. Decode and Conquer reveals: Frameworks for tackling product design and metrics questions, including the CIRCLES Method(tm), AARM Method(tm), and DIGS Method(tm) Biggest mistakes PM candidates make at the interview and how to avoid them Insider tips on just what interviewers are looking for and how to answer so they can't say NO to hiring you Sample answers for the most important PM interview questions Questions and answers covered in the book include: Design a new iPad app for Google Spreadsheet. Brainstorm as many algorithms as possible for recommending Twitter followers. You're the CEO of the Yellow Cab taxi service. How do you respond to Uber? You're part of the Google Search web spam team. How would you detect duplicate websites? The billboard industry is under monetized. How can Google create a new product or offering to address this? Get the Book that's Recommended by Executives from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle & VMWare...TODAY |
外企中Managing Director和General Manager有什么区别？
外企特别是金融类外企经常有vice president，director, managing director之类，头衔很大，其实很多只是职级而已，大多不是字面表达的意思，更多是类似国内的职称。比如VP其实就是外企 …
名片中职务的对应英文翻译及欧美企业职务含义及级别？ - 知乎
1. 如果怕误解为中干，建议翻为CEO，这个老外一听就了解。至于Managing Director要看总经理是否董事会成员，如果是，CEO和Managing Director取其一（听你们领导的），不要重复用。 …
对董事长、总经理等职务，最准确常用的商务英语翻译是什么？
中小公司： General Manager 或 Managing Director. 合伙人制公司中负责日常运作的那位合伙人： Managing Partner. 副总经理： 看公司大小. 大公司： Executive Vice President， 下面还有 …
外企职位层级的划分？从低到高，求中英文对照? - 知乎
而对大多数在职场打拼了半辈子的senior director来说，他们的职业生涯也就止步于此了。从director 到VP，是只属于少数职场精英们的最后一个升职（升值）瓶颈。 第八级： 副总 …
GM、VP、FVP、CIO都是什么职位？ - 知乎
知乎，中文互联网高质量的问答社区和创作者聚集的原创内容平台，于 2011 年 1 月正式上线，以「让人们更好的分享知识、经验和见解，找到自己的解答」为品牌使命。知乎凭借认真、专业 …
导演、监制、制片人、出品人的职责和分工是怎么样的？ - 知乎
本题已加入知乎圆桌 »影视职人说 | 青年导演养成记，更多「电影产业」讨论欢迎关注。
如何知道一个期刊是不是sci？ - 知乎
Master Journal List在这个网站能搜到的就是吗？我在web of knowledge 上能搜到文章的杂志就是sci吗？
执行董事和CEO有什么区别？ - 知乎
Nov 13, 2018 · 我的英国公司职位就是Manaing Director，然后中文名片上写“执行董事”，我承认这个名称一般中国客户都不明白，几乎都认为是董事会的什么角色。但实际上，就是CEO，或者 …
研究员为什么是principal investigator而不是researcher？ - 知乎
美国国家科学基金会(National Science Foundation，简称NSF)定义为”由受让入指定、美国国家自然科学基金委同意的负责项目科学技术方向的个体”，同时指出”这一术语一般用于研究领域”， …
PE、PM、PD、PR分别是什么岗位? - 知乎
PD（product designer/product director）：产品设计或产品负责人，多见于互联网等以产品为中心的行业。 PM（product manager/project manager）：产品经理或项目经理，前者多见于互联 …
外企中Managing Director和General Manager有什么区别？
外企特别是金融类外企经常有vice president，director, managing director之类，头衔很大，其实很多只是职级而已，大多不是字面表达的意思，更多是类似国内的职称。比如VP其实就是外企中 …
名片中职务的对应英文翻译及欧美企业职务含义及级别？ - 知乎
1. 如果怕误解为中干，建议翻为CEO，这个老外一听就了解。至于Managing Director要看总经理是否董事会成员，如果是，CEO和Managing Director取其一（听你们领导的），不要重复用。 …
对董事长、总经理等职务，最准确常用的商务英语翻译是什么？
中小公司： General Manager 或 Managing Director. 合伙人制公司中负责日常运作的那位合伙人： Managing Partner. 副总经理： 看公司大小. 大公司： Executive Vice President， 下面还有 …
外企职位层级的划分？从低到高，求中英文对照? - 知乎
而对大多数在职场打拼了半辈子的senior director来说，他们的职业生涯也就止步于此了。从director 到VP，是只属于少数职场精英们的最后一个升职（升值）瓶颈。 第八级： 副总 …
GM、VP、FVP、CIO都是什么职位？ - 知乎
知乎，中文互联网高质量的问答社区和创作者聚集的原创内容平台，于 2011 年 1 月正式上线，以「让人们更好的分享知识、经验和见解，找到自己的解答」为品牌使命。知乎凭借认真、专业 …
导演、监制、制片人、出品人的职责和分工是怎么样的？ - 知乎
本题已加入知乎圆桌 »影视职人说 | 青年导演养成记，更多「电影产业」讨论欢迎关注。
如何知道一个期刊是不是sci？ - 知乎
Master Journal List在这个网站能搜到的就是吗？我在web of knowledge 上能搜到文章的杂志就是sci吗？
执行董事和CEO有什么区别？ - 知乎
Nov 13, 2018 · 我的英国公司职位就是Manaing Director，然后中文名片上写“执行董事”，我承认这个名称一般中国客户都不明白，几乎都认为是董事会的什么角色。但实际上，就是CEO，或者 …
研究员为什么是principal investigator而不是researcher？ - 知乎
美国国家科学基金会(National Science Foundation，简称NSF)定义为”由受让入指定、美国国家自然科学基金委同意的负责项目科学技术方向的个体”，同时指出”这一术语一般用于研究领域”， …
PE、PM、PD、PR分别是什么岗位? - 知乎
PD（product designer/product director）：产品设计或产品负责人，多见于互联网等以产品为中心的行业。 PM（product manager/project manager）：产品经理或项目经理，前者多见于互联 …
