The Lack of Good (Free) Product Manager Learning Materials

When I started my Engineering Management & Product Management career (yes both were one and the same as the start-ups I worked at!) it was quite difficult to find learning material that was both free and not just telling you to get a degree (real helpful...).

I found an amazing book An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management that really lit a fire under my abilities as an Engineering Manager and gave me a look into the systems of Product Management such as the iterative process to problem discovery and execution.

Once I got into a Product Manager role, most of my learning was "on the job", which proved difficult at times. I would often find myself questioning whether a certain task was actually the job of a Product Manager or had it just been forced on me? I eventually pieced together a pretty good network of systems that helped me navigate the various stages of Product Management:

• Development
• Introduction
• Growth
• Maturity
• Decline

Stepping Away From Product Management

Due to personal ambitions and no longer having any desire to work with the politics and bureaucracy of fast-paced tech startups, I ended up leaving my EM/PM career in Defence Tech and found Developer Advocacy, which luckily takes everything that I loved about my former role, with none of the headaches!

I'm lucky enough now to be the Developer Advocate for Roadmap.sh which recently hit 1.04m registered users! 🎉

I'm also now in the perfect position to right the wrongs of the lack of a free, transparent, and thorough Product Manager learning resource (the aforementioned book only covered a very small element of Product Management for when you need to cross-contribute as an EM), so I wrote a Product Manager roadmap on roadmap.sh!

Roadmap.sh Product Manager Roadmap

I hope that aspiring or practicing Product Managers find this post and enjoy!