How have you become a product manager?

9 min readDec 7, 2021

I get this question a lot, if you are new to it, don’t worry I also ask myself the same question.

It’s common saying on the internet that there is no single path to become a product manager, the sole definition of a product manager is blurry enough let alone how to become one;

In this text I will explain how have I become one and how can you to transition and become a “Product Manager”

Background about myself (skip if you are not interested)

I started as a Project Manager back in 2012 before graduating with my Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Before this, I had worked mostly in the service sector — engineering services, software development; One of my first tasks as a Project Manager was responsible for the implementation and roll-out of a third party commercial software to manage maintenance operations;
After the initial presentations to maintenance technicians (main users) and contract customers, I was already asking myself if there was something I could do to improve the software in order to better serve my users (remember this one as it will be important later in this text).
Because of my affinity to software development and implementation I got more and more similar assignments; spent countless hours collecting requirements from management and stakeholders, writing business requirement documents (if you never heard about it it’s basically massive documents explaining everything a software (or product) should do — this is typically handed over to a software house or provider for development in a waterfall fashion).
Having studied Mechanical Engineering and being a lean freak I was not enjoying my daily tasks nor my job in general and I thought I was in the wrong profession, that my skillset and passion were not enough to deliver projects on budget, on time, and meeting all requirements… (if you ever read about product management, you probably already know that I was going a path that was already too old school for this century…)
What I was missing is that, for the waterfall method to work you have to start with a “very clear set of requirements” that will allow you to calculate and control the “costs” as you execute the project. The problem is that in software and in many other aspects of your life, we need to constantly adapt and evaluate what we are doing and therefore we constantly need to adjust the requirements this is the reason why the project management approach (i.e. waterfall) does not work.
The news for me was that there was nothing wrong with me, instead, I was just trying to become something that didn’t click with my personality — I like to grab low-hanging fruits and provide a great service to users all the time.
After some research I found that I was (just) in the wrong profession and there was a thing called “Product Management” that really resonated with my inner self. Once I learned this was full pedal to the metal in making use of my background to become a “product manager”.
In this text, I will share with you the training and books I have read in order to become a Product Manager.

Anyone can become a product manager but make sure you are doing this because you WANT!

Be honest with yourself and make sure that you WANT to become a product manager because you really believe it’s the best thing for you.

As with everything in life you should follow a purpose, if you want to become a product manager because of the big shortage of product managers or because it’s trendy or because of a promise for high salaried you will quickly lose yourself along the way

P.S.: Do not get me wrong I am not here to judge and this text will help you regardless of your motivations.

Before starting

You want to become a product manager and you want to get your hands on improving products.

That is great but first, you need to learn some basics before someone takes you seriously — I am not talking about expensive training or certificates.

But let's just check first what product management is all about.

Strangely enough, there is no single definition of product management, as it looks like each company decided to give it different meanings.

But a couple of must-have skills are easy to guess regardless of where you end up:

Business management
Team Management
Time management
Stakeholder management
Product owner — as defined in scrum
Time management

Most above-mentioned skills are not unique to project managers, actually, these can be found in many other professionals the main difference is the mindset, instead of working with a fixed list of requirements to be delivered; one typically has the freedom to evaluate what is it that will bring the most benefit with the least amount of resources.

In short → Product management is all about building a product or a service as you go, making sure you deliver VALUE as quickly as possible.

Learning

In today’s world, there is no excuse, one can learn virtually everything assuming you are willing to put in the time it takes you to get there. Resources are countless with great product managers willing to share their stories, skills, and teaching how to become one.

The favorite training I have attended were (I also suggest you complete them in the same order of appearance)

“Becoming a product manager" — by Cole Mercer, this training is available on Linkdeding Learning as well as on Udemy.
“Product management: building a product strategy" by Teg Grenager will guide you on how to think strategically about your product
“Product management: building a product roadmap" by Teg Grenager will guide on the main considerations to build a product roadmap.
“Software design: from requirements to release” — if Neelam Dwivedi is especially valuable if you are not used to software products.
Design thinking certification by IBM — (it’s free so just invest time into learning, it’s quite interesting)
“Stay lean with kanban” by Doug Rose— a tool in your pocket never hurts, despite scrum being more popular and most likely be the one you use, why not learn about other methodologies like kanban.

pro-tip: LinkedIn once in a while offers the premium subscription for a month, that comes with LinkedIn Learning included, take the 30 days to nurture yourself and show off the premium badge — this will also help you find job opportunities; if you are interested in knowing more about how to find your dream job, check this article.

Get a mentor

It’s really hard to prove and challenge yourself if you are not in a product-related role already or close enough to a product team to not only gain experience but also to understand if this is actually what you want to do; My best advice is: “Don’t be shy and get a mentor” the easiest way is to search on LinkedIn or to join an online community like Product School;

If you want to know more about the product school check their webinars or attend one of the free conferences they put together, there you will be able to network with product people from around the world;

Other easy-to-use resources include inside your own company — if you are working chances are someone in your organization can tell you more about products you have been developed as we speak or join a pro-Bono project this will help you meet product managers that might be willing to help you.

Read about it

Books are great at changing your mind(set) here are my favorite readings on the matter:

“Start with Why” by Simon Sinek — this is more to inspire you into building great products and to start with “why”
“The 5 days Sprint” by Jake Knapp— the 5 days sprint is a method developed by years of experience of helping Google Ventures startups (yes, google has a fund to well… fund startups) and will allow you to develop a clear product vision in just 5 days.
“Product lean playbook” by Dan Olsen it’s my product bible, I have it on my desk at all times, reading from beginning to the end it’s quite an endeavor, but I use it to search for specific topics from time to time (e.g. collect user feedback, prioritization frameworks,…).
“The lean startup” by Eric Ries— how to develop products and businesses with few resources.

P.S.: most of the knowledge from these books feed an entire section of books about product management, training, and websites. One can easily get lost in the vast amount of information available online, and that's why I prefer reading books.

Practice — learn by doing (and failing, a lot)

You or your stakeholders expected more out of one or 2 sprints? Great

Didn’t work as expected? Super
Was the sprint result poor? Awesome

“Identification is the first step towards redemption”, now make sure you learn what went wrong, work to fix it, and improve from there, the scrum guide offers you some tools you can practice together with your team

Rinse and repeat towards perfection — don’t worry it will never be perfect, but I hope you got the idea.

The biggest advises I can get you

Love the product you work

If you are working full time on something make sure you are passionate about the topic, after all, you will spend most of your (work) life on these topics so make sure to like it.

Learn about the competition

This is not a one of exercise do it regularly, you show know as much about what you are up against as you know about your product.

Appreciate your team and usrs, prioritize them above everything else

You have a manager title but even you want to do this it is not ABOUT YOU or your titles, ultimately this is not even about your product nor your stakeholders, the most important aspects are your users and your team without them nothing will be done and nothing will be used.

Without your product team, you will build no product or services

Without users, you are built a solution for a problem that does not exist or you haven’t found the so-called product-market fit.

Make sure to have this well present in everything you do.

Frameworks are great but nothing beats your gut feeling

Make sure you study prioritization frameworks they are great at helping you to prioritize when you do not have a feeling for it, especially at the beginning of your product.

After a while, you will develop a gut feeling for prioritization; Sometimes the next steps are so obvious to you that using frameworks will only slow you down.

If you ever feel lost, well, you can always go back to the fundamentals and use a framework that suits your needs.

Work life balance?

Got bad news for you, remember that you are doingthis because YOU WANT TO ? well this is the time to revisit those thoughts.

Work-life balance will be really hard, especially early in your career or the beginning of a new product.

Preparing the product strategy, product roadmaps, meetings, and calls, follow-ups, writing tickets, prioritizing your team’s work, depending on the size of your organization you might participate in supporting users, documentation… all this require time.

Outside of work your mind will constantly be flooded with ideas about features, backlog, bugs, product strategy, competition. It is very easy to burn you out, so be mindful and force yourself to have time to breathe. Make sure you take longer breaks if you feel that you need them.

Make sure you allow some time outside of your work environment to have these thoughts.

My ideas happened when I allowed myself to think without boundaries, either strolling by the river, circling, or having a shower. I am fine with this because I am passionate about the product I am working on (remember that I told you that you should love your product? well, he will be with you 24/7 so…)