The Lack of Good (Free) Product Manager Learning Materials
When I started my Engineering Management & Product Management career (yes both were one and the same as the start-ups I worked at!) it was quite difficult to find learning material that was both free and not just telling you to get a degree (real helpful...).
I found an amazing book An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management that really lit a fire under my abilities as an Engineering Manager and gave me a look into the systems of Product Management such as the iterative process to problem discovery and execution.
Once I got into a Product Manager role, most of my learning was "on the job", which proved difficult at times. I would often find myself questioning whether a certain task was actually the job of a Product Manager or had it just been forced on me? I eventually pieced together a pretty good network of systems that helped me navigate the various stages of Product Management:
- Development
- Introduction
- Growth
- Maturity
- Decline
Stepping Away From Product Management
Due to personal ambitions and no longer having any desire to work with the politics and bureaucracy of fast-paced tech startups, I ended up leaving my EM/PM career in Defence Tech and found Developer Advocacy, which luckily takes everything that I loved about my former role, with none of the headaches!
I'm lucky enough now to be the Developer Advocate for Roadmap.sh which recently hit 1.04m registered users! 🎉
I'm also now in the perfect position to right the wrongs of the lack of a free, transparent, and thorough Product Manager learning resource (the aforementioned book only covered a very small element of Product Management for when you need to cross-contribute as an EM), so I wrote a Product Manager roadmap on roadmap.sh!
Roadmap.sh Product Manager Roadmap
I hope that aspiring or practicing Product Managers find this post and enjoy!
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