product fundamentals

Questions UX Designers Should be Asking

The ability to ask meaningful questions is a fundamental yet often overlooked skill.

How to Build a Minimum Loveable Product

Learn how to get your digital ideas to market sooner, but still deliver a product that users fall in love with.

What, exactly, is a Product Manager?

What do they do? Where do they come from? Why do they like sharpies so much?

Q&A: What does a product manager do?

There’s no one definition. People have written whole books on this question, and it varies from company to company, and from stage to stage

A Product Manager’s Job

Product management is one of the hardest jobs to define in any organization, partially because it’s different in every company.

Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech's Hottest Products

Jackson has devised very specific hacks that product managers can use to manage people and expectations effectively. Starting with the birthplace (and chopping block) of new product features, he highlights meetings with founders and cross-functional stakeholders as a critical part of the job.

Bad Managers Talk, Good Managers Write

To three highly effective, seasoned, and successful executives, being a good talker isn’t just overvalued, it can actually be detrimental. Rather, there’s a subtle, often-overlooked ability that’s one of the most vital skills you can have as a manager — the ability to write.

Great PMs don’t spend their time on solutions

I encourage you to try changing how you spend your time. Do it on something small, obsess about the problem definition. Then see how fast and easy it is to know what to build, to build it, and to see customers value it because you truly understood what they needed.

The Day-To-Day Product Management Toolkit

In this talk from ProductTank Oslo, Janna Bastow focused on practical advice: What tools should you use as a product manager, and how do you use them? As a product manager you have different areas that all need their own set of tools, such as design, customer success, analytics, product and overall efficiency.

Behind Every Great Product by Marty Cagan

Silicon Valley Product Group’s Marty Cagan shared his latest thoughts on what makes a great product manager by looking at the people behind some great products.

Insights and lessons from some of the best people in product

Each shares their take on a particular aspect of product, from pinpointing the Job-to-be-Done to creating successful users and deciding when to rebuild.

Intercom’s Paul Adams on product

Paul Adams is our VP of Product at Intercom and has 10+ years experience leading product, research and design teams at some of the world’s most influential companies.

Hunter Walk on product management

Hunter shares his take on what it takes to excel in product management, why growing companies must prioritize bigger bets over easy, low-effort improvements, how he identifies his seed investments, and more.

Atlassian’s Evan Michner on why PMs need to be great writers

Successful product managers = world-class communicators. It's why much of a PM's time is spent writing. Evan Michner, creative writer-turned-product-manager, makes the case for why writing is a critical (and not-easy) skill for PMs to develop + tactical ways a PM can keep their tech-y role creative.

Lessons in product management with Intercom’s Colin Bentley and Brian Donohue

Colin and Brian reflects on what’s changed in product management during their journey, what has and hasn’t gone to plan, how they’ve managed to stay close to customers while rising up the management ranks, learning to work with marketing, and much more.

The (Abbreviated) History of Product Management

An exploration of the history of the Product Manager from its early ideation by Neil McElroy to its growth at Hewlett-Packard thru its maturation at Microsoft and into today. Former Microsoft Project Manager, Ellen Chisa, Former Microsoft Engineer (and 55th hire), Mark Zbikowski and Matt LeMay, the Author of Product Management in Practice, talk about this evolution over the past 80 years.

Square’s Aman Manik on product management culture

Aman noticed that his fellow product managers at Square had very different perspectives on what their job description should be. So, he decided to get them all together and to come up with a singular definition of what it means to be part of their product team. They created a "PM culture guide".

Success starts with a great product

Building a great product should be the first focus of every startup. This collection of lessons offers our guidance on the tough decisions you will face as a product manager.

INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

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.

Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller uses the seven universal elements of powerful stories to teach readers how to dramatically improve how they connect with customers and grow their businesses.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.

On Writing

Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it—fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

The New York Times bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work.