Product management resources, the list I keep sending people

People ask me how to get into product, and for years I pasted the same list into a message each time. It kept growing, so now it lives here. This is what I actually send.

How people actually get in

The common path: product analyst or product associate → associate product manager → product manager → senior product manager.

The other common path: strong business analyst or engineer → associate product manager → product manager → senior.

And the part that isn’t on any diagram: be good at what you do, have high agency (read Shreyas Doshi’s definition), and keep reaching out to people before you feel ready. Alex Banayan’s book The Third Door is the long version of that sentence.

• It is easier to switch inside your own company. You won’t get it if you don’t ask.
• If you’re switching companies, build a body of work first: a portfolio, case studies, something you shipped on your own. Make your intent visible.

Where to apply in India

• Spreadsheet of product-hiring companies in India

Other people’s resource lists

• Lenny’s Newsletter. If you read one thing, read this.
• Product Growth, Aakash Gupta. Deep dives on how products actually grow.
• Shreyas Doshi. His threads and talks, in one place.
• The Product Compass, Paweł Huryn. Frameworks, drawn well.
• Product Talk, Teresa Torres. Continuous discovery, properly explained.
• The Product Folks. The Indian PM community I’d point anyone to first.
• Sachin Rekhi’s top resources for product managers
• ProductHood’s learning board on Trello
• Free online classes for product managers, Product Popcorn

Communities

• The Product Folks
• Insurjo, the free PM programme by The Product Folks
• ProductTank Pune
• The Product Tree
• Product League

People worth reading

• Shreyas Doshi. Start here.
• Ravi Mehta
• Lenny Rachitsky
• Naval, for the philosophy side
• Marty Cagan, SVPG articles
• Ben Thompson, Stratechery
• Andrew Chen
• Ben Horowitz, a16z
• Mind the Product
• First Round Review on hiring PMs
• The minimum viable product manager, Brandon Chu (archived copy, the original is down)

Video and audio

• ProductHood, including their courses and PLL Conf
• The Product Folks on YouTube
• Masters of Scale
• Lenny’s Podcast. The best long-form PM interviews going.

Structured learning

• Pragmatic Leaders’ free nine-part PM course on YouTube
• PM Dojo, Accelerated Product Learning. Organised and free.
• edX, Product Management Fundamentals. Free to audit.
• edX, Innovation Leadership. Free to audit.

Case study and interview practice

1. PM School case study solutions. Good for assignments.
2. ProductHood courses. Free.
3. Product Management Exercises
4. Daily Product Prep
5. The PM Interview
6. Four practice case studies for PM interviews
7. Aced interview question bank, formerly Exponent. Real questions, sorted by company and round.
8. Ken Norton, How to hire a product manager
9. Shreyas Doshi on PM interviews, video
10. UX Hack, UX case studies

SQL

• HackerRank SQL
• Khan Academy SQL
• ThoughtSpot SQL tutorial, the old Mode tutorial under its new owner

Google Analytics

• Google’s own demo account. Play with real data before you touch your own.
• Learn Google Analytics with a real example, Nelio
• Experiment and learn with the demo account, Bounteous
• Demo account walkthrough, Online Metrics

Product case studies

• How Google Earth mapped 98% of the world
• Why Google failed
• GrowthHackers growth studies

UI and UX case studies

• Growth.design case studies. The best of this list.
• When to use user flows
• Developing the Zomato design system
• Building Zomato Gold
• UX portfolio template, UXfolio
• UX designer portfolios, Case Study Club (archived copy, the site is down)
• Landlord and tenant communication app, UX case study
• Redesigning seat selection for MakeMyTrip buses
• The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman. Also free on Udacity.
• Product Design Exercises, Artiom Dashinsky
• UX Hack, listed above too

Growth

• GrowthHackers and their growth studies
• Hacking Growth, Sean Ellis
• pmcurve, Deepak Singh. Started as Growth Catalyst.
• High Growth Handbook, Elad Gil
• Daman Soni on growth
• OpenView’s product-led growth guide
• Reforge blog
• Chameleon on product-led growth
• First Round: pick the right lane, a customer acquisition playbook
• Growth Engineering blog
• Readings compiled by Anshul Khandelwal, head of marketing at Ola, previously UpGrad
• Growth without ads, video
• Marketing Examples

Strategy

• Not Boring, Packy McCormick
• Manas Saloi, learn business strategy
• Melissa Perri, what is good product strategy
• Gibson Biddle, intro to product strategy
• Eugene Wei, Status as a Service
• CXL on economic moats
• CB Insights on business moats
• Conor Dewey on value chains
• Product strategy, a guide with examples
• Nitin Julka, my product strategy approach
• HBR, Can you say what your strategy is?
• Gibson Biddle, balancing customer delight and profits
• Books: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, and Understanding Michael Porter by Joan Magretta

Enough tech to be dangerous

Do this after the basics above, not before.

• Preparing for Google’s PM technical round when you’re not technical
• Technology skills for product managers, Department of Product
• PM Tech Lessons

About people, and about you

• Hang in there, little product manager
• How to talk about yourself in the best possible way, Julie Zhuo
• Product Management in Practice, Matt Lemay. The day-to-day of the role and managing yourself in it.
• High agency, the Shreyas Doshi thread
• Aaron Swartz, theory of change
• My billion dollar mistake, Product Habits

Problem solving

1. Product management is the art of problems, not solving
2. HBR, Are you solving the right problems?
3. A framework for first-principles thinking, Neil Kakkar
4. Farnam Street on first principles
5. First Principles Thinking guide

Staying current

• The Ken and Inc42 for Indian business and tech
• Product Hunt, to see what people are building
• YourStack, what products professionals actually use
• Owwly, product discovery
• TechCrunch
• Dribbble, for design inspiration
• Indie Hackers

Why startups fail

• Failory’s startup cemetery
• Startup Graveyard

Experimentation

• HBR, a refresher on A/B testing
• A tiny experiment, The Snippet

User research

• The Mom Test, Rob Fitzpatrick. Read the book, it is short.
• Three rules for customer feedback, Intercom
• Customer interviews, CXL
• User feedback guide, Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar)

Usability testing

• Usability testing 101, Nielsen Norman Group
• Usability testing guide, UserReport
• Why you only need to test with five users, Nielsen Norman Group

Frameworks

• Product Frameworks
• Occasionally Useful, resources for founders

Books people recommended to me

• The Lean Startup. Product work looks a lot like starting a company.
• Lean Analytics. Which metrics to look at, and when.
• Y Combinator’s startup school videos and the YC library
• Inspired, Marty Cagan. Hooked, Nir Eyal. Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari, for understanding humans.
• Product Management in Practice, Matt Lemay
• Interview prep: Cracking the PM Interview (Jackie Bavaro and Gayle McDowell), The Product Manager Interview, Decode and Conquer, and Secrets of the Product Manager Interview (all Lewis C. Lin)

If a link is dead or you think something is missing, email me.