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Ship It: Silicon Valley Product Managers Reveal All
You’re up against a million deadlines. Your engineers are fretting about the functionality. Your designers are in mutiny about specifications. Your business manager is screaming about the budget, and your sales team just wants to talk pricing. What do you do?
The biggest challenge and most important responsibility of a Product Manager are to stay focused on the user. You are the advocate for the customer. You put their interest first, and ensure that the end result actually achieves what you set out to accomplish in the first place.
Even the best Product Managers cannot do this through instinct alone. You’re not psychic. You need to gather data. You need to systematically understand your users. And you need to learn how to effectively communicate this understanding to your team, so they are inspired to share your vision and stay on track.
Presenting practical advice and thought leadership from PMs at companies like Airbnb, Reddit, and Square, ‘Ship it: Successful Product Managers Reveal All’ shows you how to succeed as a Product Manager by putting the user first, and getting your team on your side.
The chapters you’re about to read provide specific advice on conducting user research and applying metrics that actually matter, as well as more general wisdom about the Product Manager career path, communication skills, and life lessons from PMs at the top of their game.
No matter where you are on your PM journey, you’re bound to find nuggets of wisdom here that allow you to upgrade your thinking and achieve more for your users and your career.
The biggest challenge and most important responsibility of a Product Manager are to stay focused on the user. You are the advocate for the customer. You put their interest first, and ensure that the end result actually achieves what you set out to accomplish in the first place.
Even the best Product Managers cannot do this through instinct alone. You’re not psychic. You need to gather data. You need to systematically understand your users. And you need to learn how to effectively communicate this understanding to your team, so they are inspired to share your vision and stay on track.
Presenting practical advice and thought leadership from PMs at companies like Airbnb, Reddit, and Square, ‘Ship it: Successful Product Managers Reveal All’ shows you how to succeed as a Product Manager by putting the user first, and getting your team on your side.
The chapters you’re about to read provide specific advice on conducting user research and applying metrics that actually matter, as well as more general wisdom about the Product Manager career path, communication skills, and life lessons from PMs at the top of their game.
No matter where you are on your PM journey, you’re bound to find nuggets of wisdom here that allow you to upgrade your thinking and achieve more for your users and your career.
91 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 1, 2018
14 people are currently reading
402 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 13, 2019
Use this book of Product School as a starting point for digging deeper in product management. The goal of the book is understanding: understanding the customers through research and data, understanding the industry, and understanding of what becoming a PM entails. It's a really quick read and has useful insights from top Silicon Valley Product Managers working for Slack, Square, Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, Optimizely and more. Recommended!
January 23, 2019
brief summary of concepts of managing the product...though i found most of the concepts very generic. finished the book within an hour.
January 16, 2019
Is always amazing to learn about the experience and stories of the top product managers.
With an excellent design, it makes the reading flows.
With an excellent design, it makes the reading flows.
December 16, 2020
This book at best is a teaser or may be rough notes of all the ProductCon Talks from various practicing product managers. Yet another motley crew kind of collection from Product School.
It has been my observation ever since I read such books stitched from talks of various experts, though they might have some insights in them, they fail to deliver in depth knowledge about any single topic and also fail to build over each others insights, and the net results remains a very shallow book with some trailer type rushes about product management.
A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing, and this book does very little justice to Product Management discipline as a whole. The reader is expected to visit each of the talks associated with these articles to get the complete picture!
Not at all impressed.
It has been my observation ever since I read such books stitched from talks of various experts, though they might have some insights in them, they fail to deliver in depth knowledge about any single topic and also fail to build over each others insights, and the net results remains a very shallow book with some trailer type rushes about product management.
A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing, and this book does very little justice to Product Management discipline as a whole. The reader is expected to visit each of the talks associated with these articles to get the complete picture!
Not at all impressed.
December 24, 2022
Tiene algunos consejos valiosos, pero la mayoría me pareció bastante genérico, incluso hay algunos consejos que consideraría de plano contraproducentes.
El capítulo que más me gustó fue acerca de la importancia de desarrollar el liderazgo y cómo es que viene desde dentro, de desarrollar cualidades como:
- La humildad
- La valentía
- La capacidad de tomar decisiones
- La introspección
- La curiosidad
- Ser visionario
- Mostrar vulnerabilidad
El consejo que creo que es contraproducente es uno que menciona un manager de Facebook, diciendo que basta con aventarle problemas difíciles a personas inteligentes aunque su trasfondo no sea el adecuado, creo que el libro completo es más útil solamente para Product Managers muy en los inicios, y eso se debe tomar con gran escepticismo.
El capítulo que más me gustó fue acerca de la importancia de desarrollar el liderazgo y cómo es que viene desde dentro, de desarrollar cualidades como:
- La humildad
- La valentía
- La capacidad de tomar decisiones
- La introspección
- La curiosidad
- Ser visionario
- Mostrar vulnerabilidad
El consejo que creo que es contraproducente es uno que menciona un manager de Facebook, diciendo que basta con aventarle problemas difíciles a personas inteligentes aunque su trasfondo no sea el adecuado, creo que el libro completo es más útil solamente para Product Managers muy en los inicios, y eso se debe tomar con gran escepticismo.
July 23, 2019
Ótimo livro pra quem está começando na área. Para quem já começou, eles abordam uma série de assuntos que normalmente não se fala tanto nas comunidades.
Como é um livro muito pequeno, faz sentido todo mundo da área ler.
Particularmente não gosto de livros feitos de um alinhado de artigos, mas é interessante a mistura de ideias e pontos de vista sobre assuntos diversos da profissão de PM.
Como é um livro muito pequeno, faz sentido todo mundo da área ler.
Particularmente não gosto de livros feitos de um alinhado de artigos, mas é interessante a mistura de ideias e pontos de vista sobre assuntos diversos da profissão de PM.
November 7, 2019
Contains advice by product people in established tech companies about specific topics. Good for beginners as a starting point to gauge terms and language. Id suggest complement further with blogs, courses, other books and most importantly: trying out a project yourself to flesh out your product skills.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 10, 2019
Honestly, it’s a 3,5, but you really should know what to expect. This isn’t a book with deep knowledge, but rather a conspect of different ideas presented by people with various experiences. If you look at it as a mind-freshener, it’s a 4. If you want to learn something really new, it’s a 2,5. But generally, this is an okay light reading with some helpful advice, that’s why I rounded it up
August 18, 2020
A great quick read for people who are curious about product management or aspiring to be one. I love reading insights, advice and stories from professionals in the field. This also lead me to watch some of the speaker’s full talk on YouTube.
September 23, 2020
A tiny book to get overall remarks from 17 PMs of Silicon Valley. My favorites in this collection are;
- How to achieve product market fit
- The only metric that matters
- A product centric overview of machine learning
- Product driven growth
- AI for fun and profit
- How to achieve product market fit
- The only metric that matters
- A product centric overview of machine learning
- Product driven growth
- AI for fun and profit
December 14, 2020
An exceptional compilation of chapters that entail lessons learned, way ahead for aspiring PMs, Product management role across different domains by leading product managers in the tech industry. Especially liked the Product managers in the ML technology chapters towards the end of the book
May 4, 2021
Useful stuff in here - I haven’t read a product book which discusses using cognitive biases to your advantage to influence stakeholders, so that section was great! Would have enjoyed more female representation in the chapter authors however.
May 10, 2019
It's just better to watch the talks on YouTube
October 5, 2019
Yesterday’s delighters become today’s performance features and tomorrow’s must-haves.
The Product world is changing so quickly that backgrounds are less relevant than talent and intelligence.
The Product world is changing so quickly that backgrounds are less relevant than talent and intelligence.
July 2, 2020
Great read. Concise, useful & practical summary of some effective product practices.
May 25, 2021
I had to read this for my Marketing Executive job training and I loved it. It was very useful and insightful and gave me a deeper knowledge into the world of Product Management.
November 4, 2021
Moderate read about product management's recommended practices.
It's written in collaboration with different Product Managers. Each provides a tip and their experience applying it.
It's written in collaboration with different Product Managers. Each provides a tip and their experience applying it.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews