Read the book Inspired by Marty Cagan. If that doesn't get you excited about Product Management I don't know what will. Having 11 years of experience in tech will help tremendously but you'll need to have some awesome soft skills too.

Awesome article, Alex!

An FYI: your link to the book Inspired is broken. You might want to put an Amazon affiliate link :)

Sprint and Inspired are good books.

Don't Make Me Think and The Design of Everyday Things are also good additions to the library

Work related: Inspired by Mary Cagan, The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

Non-Work related: The Supreme Gift and Warrior of Light by Coelho.

I recommend Anchorhead (1998). Inspired by Lovecraft, very well written. Puzzles are either simple or very logical, the biggest danger is that you miss an item or don't map properly. Atmosphere is at least as good as in Lovecraft books. And it's free.

1. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
2. Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
3. Inspired by Marty Cagan

https://inspired-ideas.web.app shares the one-idea that changes your life.

I often see an idea that help solve a problem that I was stuck. A few days ago, people start to shares those ideas that helped them, so I created Inspired Ideas that you can learn from other experiences

Hi guys,

A tweet got me (and many others) attention from David Perell "Name one idea that changed your life". This results in many people shared the one-idea they have learn somewhere, that helped shaped their knowledge.

I created Inspired Ideas for 2 reasons: (1) I often collect quotes, (2) I hope that you can share one idea that helped you either in relationship, career, or positive impact.

Thank you!

Books: They Ask, You Answer, Inspired, Don't Make Me Think

There is no perfection, only iteration, and the best source of learning is always to talk with users. It also helps to have deep domain experience and insights. Steve Jobs said something about the customerS not seeing leaps in innovation (in UX), so instead look to engineers for these. This is more when you are early in a product and see a large problem that could be solved a very different way than today.

A list I put together a while back: https://www.encona.com/posts/product-manager-resources

Overview books:

* Inspired

* The Product Manager’s Desk Reference

* The Lean Startup

* Agile Product Management with Scrum

Interview preparation (good for breadth, even if you’re not applying for jobs):

* Decode & Conquer

* Cracking the PM interview

Other good books for PMs:

* Hooked

* The Design of Everyday Things

* Zero to One

* Traction

Sprint by Jake Knapp

Inspired by Marty Cagan

i believe one of the culprits for software taking so long is planning. this is alluded to in marty cagan's excellent book _Inspired_.

first, the caveat: a software dev project will take up as much time as is allotted to it. when you have more than enough time allotted for a project, most people either spend more time in research or allow themselves partial implementation paths of multiple solutions to help decide which one is best. on the other end of the project, every project can be polished forever. so dev projects will take as least as much time as has been allotted to it.

when we go through the planning process, it usually follows something like this:

1. dev estimates how many "points" (which translates into time in most peoples mind) to allot to a task. dev then pads it to account for dev optimism and wanting to make sure they have the chance of meeting the "committment"
2. program/project/product manager pads the number a bit further because they've been burned in the past on dev optimistic estimates and it's better to underpromise and overdeliver
3. dev proceeds on the task with the bloated estimate baked in and the task takes the full time allotted to it. it's baked inefficiency.

part of the problem is the concept of "committment" for estimates. good scrum organizations have changed that term to "prediction" instead of "committment" since this has been such a big problem. but even that isn't enough to solve the political capital lost when you "predict" wrong.

i think that any estimation above "t-shirt size" is going to bake this inefficiency into your process. the solution is less planning and more doing.

--- Books ---

Tuned In - great book, describes how to really understand user perspectives as opposed to 'inside-out' development.
The book's based on many principles taught in the Pragmatic Marketing prodm course.

Inspired (Marty Cagan) - good cross section of PM, covers People, Process and Product separately. Startups to large companies.

The Art of Product Management - a series of articles, describes software PM in startups to larger companies. More about the role of PM rather than product itself.

Rules for Revolutionaries - Guy Kawasaki's book, half entrepreneur morale book and half how to create a product quickly.

--- Blogs ---

Cranky Product Manager - crankypm.com

Silicon Valley Product Group - svpg.com (Marty Cagan's blog)

--- I would avoid: ---

Value Prop (Jose Palomino)

Will It Fly? (Thomas McKnight)

As a mobile software engineer turned product manager I can echo what the first to replies said. Skip training/certification as real product management skills are built on doing it and the mistakes you make along the way. If you're interested in a good way to go about developing product I recommend Marty Cagan's book Inspired and Eric Reis' Lean Startup. That will save you some bux you should spend bootstrapping your startup versus a course or useless certification.

A list of books I posted in another thread:

* Start with Steve Blank’s The Startup Manual or Four Step to Epiphany. Other books:

* Dan Olsen, The Lean Product Playbook

* Mart Cagan, Inspired

* Ryan Singer, Shape Up

* Jake Knapp, Sprint

* Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping

* Stephen Wunker, Costovation

Also checkout /r/productmanagement subreddit.