Table of Contents
How to Use This Book vi
Frequently Asked Questions viii
Foreword xv
Introduction xvi
Chapter 1 What Exactly Does a Product Manager Do? 1
Product Management Is Responsible for Value 2
A Product Manager Is Not a Project Manager 4
A Product Manager Is Not a Product Owner 4
Where Did Product Managers Come From? 5
Three Other Traits Shared by All Great Product Managers 15
So What Does a PM Do? 15
Key Insights 16
Chapter 2 Do You Want to Be a Product Manager? 17
Why a Product Manager? 18
So, Are These Good Reasons? 24
But What Exactly Do Ya Do Here? 24
A Typical Day 27
What If You Don't Want to Be a Product Manager After All? 29
Key Insights 30
Chapter 3 UX Skills That Carry Over 31
How PM Differs from UX 32
UX vs. Product Skills Histogram 37
Information Architecture 43
Intense Customer Satisfaction 45
Solving Problems Through Iterative Design 47
Leading Through Influence 48
Product Managers Are from Mars… 49
Key Insights 50
Chapter 4 Wrangling Engineers 51
Keep Engineering Teams Aligned 52
What's Your Definition of "Done"? 60
Iterative Process Improvement Through Retrospectives 62
Getting Results from Engineers 63
Estimation and Negotiation 65
Key Insights 68
Chapter 5 The Business of Product Is Business 69
Build Sustainable Value 70
Thinking in Terms of the Market 70
Targeting a Market 71
Finding Product-Market Fit 74
What Is the Go-to-Market Plan? 77
Customer Obsession 79
Launching vs. Optimizing 80
Business Operations 81
Financial Business Skills 82
Business-to-Business (B2B) Products 83
Key Insights 86
Chapter 6 Product Analytics: Growth, Engagement, Retention 87
Living in the Data 88
Funnel Optimization 90
Growth Metrics 95
Growing Your User Base like a Pirate 96
Two Cautions 103
Key Insights 106
Chapter 7 Testing Hypotheses with Experiments 107
Experimentation as a Way of Life 108
Build vs. Fix vs. Tune 109
Defining Hypotheses 109
Proposing and Prioritizing Experiments 111
How to Run an A/B Test 116
Beyond A/B Tests 120
Key Insights 127
Chapter 8 Getting the Money 129
Profit and Loss 130
Revenue Models 131
Breaking Even 133
Revenue Lifecycles 145
What's Money Without Customers or Transactions? 147
Key Insights 148
Chapter 9 Healthy Collaborative Tension on the Product UX Spectrum 149
The Overlap and Its Disconnects 150
Where Do You Draw the Line? 152
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 154
Where in the Org Chart? 157
When You're Not a Designer Anymore 158
Being a Hybrid 159
Superfriends 161
Key Insights 161
Chapter 10 Roadmaps and How to Say "No" 163
Defining the Roadmap 164
Feasible Horizons: Now, Next, Later 166
Product Strategy 168
Prioritization 171
Populating and Maintaining the Roadmap 179
Epilogue to the "Break-Even" Story 181
The Art of Saying No 182
Key Insights 187
Chapter 11 Chief Information Architect 189
The Head of Product's Secret Sauce 190
Be a Boss 193
Selling Your Team's Services Internally as a Product 196
Building Product Teams 199
Investing in Your Team 201
Someone Has to Lead-Why Not You? 203
Key Insights 203
Index 205
Acknowledgements 217
About the Author 222
