Product Management in Practice: A Practical, Tactical Guide for Your First Day and Every Day After

Product management has become a critical function for modern organizations, from small startups to corporate enterprises. And yet, the day-to-day work of product management remains largely misunderstood. In theory, product managers are high-flying visionaries who build products that people love. In practice, they\'re hard-working facilitators who bring clarity and focus to their teams.

In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition, Matt LeMay provides real-world guidance for current and aspiring product managers. Updated for the era of remote and hybrid work, this book provides actionable answers to product management\'s most persistent and confounding questions, starting with: What exactly am I supposed to do all day?

With this book, you\'ll learn:

What the day-to-day work of product management entails--and how to excel at it
Why no job title or description will resolve the ambiguity of your role
How to bridge the false dichotomy between "strategy" and "execution"
Why the temptation to focus on decks and documentation can be bad for your team (and for you)
How to prioritize your time and pick your battles

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ISBN-10

1098119738

ISBN-13

978-1098119737

Publisher

OReilly Media

Price

32.99

File Type

PDF

Page No.

294

Matt LeMay

Matt LeMay is the author of Agile for Everybody (O'Reilly Media, 2018) and Product Management in Pra ...

Review

"This book embraces all the complexity and ambiguity that product people navigate every day. It does NOT try to oversimplify product management into a handful of frameworks. Instead, it is a practical, hands-on guide full of real-world stories about how other product people are approaching their work. Product Management in Practice recreates the experience of learning directly from senior product managers across industries and organizations, and captures those learnings in concise summaries and easy-to-use checklists."
- Petra Wille, Author of Strong Product People & Product Leadership Coach

"Just get this book, OK? From start to finish it teaches hard won lessons from the real world challenges facing product people today, remote or in person. If you make products for a living the answers you've been looking for throughout your career are here waiting for you."
- Scott Berkun, author of Making Things Happen and The Myths of Innovation

"This is an indispensable guide to navigating the daily ambiguity and compromise that define product management once you realise there is no one right way to do the job. In these pages Matt leads you past the theory to how to really get the job done in the real world, underlining each insight with stories from practising product managers."
- Martin Eriksson, Co-Founder of Mind the Product and Co-Author of Product Leadership

From the Author

I probably don't need to tell you that a whole lot has changed since the first edition of this book was published in 2017.

But I should tell you that this book itself has changed quite a bit.

This edition goes into much greater detail about several topics that were suggested to me by working product managers: product strategy, career growth and leadership, metrics and experimentation, and, yes, remote and hybrid work. But beyond that, this edition seeks to dismantle the unrealistic expectations that leave product managers demoralized, discouraged, and burnt out.

Good product management cannot be reduced to frameworks and methods alone, nor can it be measured in punishing 60-hour work weeks. The truth is, there is no one "right way" to do product management. Every great product manager I know struggles with insecurity, impostor syndrome, or the nagging fear that they are missing something important or doing something wrong.

If my research for this edition could be summarized in a single paraphrased sentence, it would be: "I wish I hadn't stressed out so much about how 'the company I work for isn't doing product management right', and had just focused on doing the best work I could." Believe me when I say that no organization is "doing product management right", regardles of what they might say in case studies and conference talks.

Once you realize that there is no "right way" to do product management, you are free to explore how you want to do product management within the unique context of your role, your team, and your organization. My hope for this book is that it can help you find some joy and balance in a role that is too often described in terms of rote frameworks and ill-advised overwork. No matter how many books and articles you read, product management will always present you with new lessons to learn and new people to learn from and with.