Growth PM resources

March 1, 2021
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Product

This is an email that I've sent over the years to various friends who have asked for growth PM rapid ramp-up resources

  1. Shipping Greatness book - probably the best overall resource, read it first and reference it, lots of the stuff seems super simple but the more time I spend as a PM the more I realize it's really just getting the simple stuff right and repeating it over and over that makes all the difference
  2. First 90 days - another good one, although less tactical than #1. Just think about this book once a week and see if you're making progress towards its recommendations
  3. Product Roadmaps - I skimmed a lot of books trying to define what a useful product roadmap actually is, and this is the best I found
  4. 15 minute review - I try to do this every evening or morning, and find it incredibly helpful. I created an airtable form for myself with these 6 questions (3 about the previous day, 3 about the day coming up)
  5. PMHQ - this is the best Slack PM community I've found. I don't check it as often as I should, but I wish I did
  6. Decision Journal - This is one I picked up more recently that I'm trying to make a habit of
  7. Documentation + templates - Get in the habit of using templates early and documenting everything (product specs, roadmaps, team mission, strategy, OKRs, etc). If you have to have the same meeting more than once to explain the same thing to different people, it should be a doc/wiki/video explainer instead
  8. Calendar protection - This is the one that everyone talks about and is the first thing to get sacrificed, but is really the most important. Lots of PMs spend their time running from meeting to meeting, keeping things on the rails. This feels important/impactful, but in the long run your job is just to make sure you build the right product at the right time, which just means talking to customers and thinking/writing, not having 30 min meetings. to that end I try to block off hours every day to myself to just think, look at data, and write product specs. For myself that means no meetings from 8am-12pm.
  9. 3-5 things a day (and really only One) - write down 3-5 things you want to get done in the morning on a post-it. No more. each new morning, start a new post-it.
  10. Top productivity tips - i reread this every 6 months or so just for reminders

Tools

  1. google keep - I use this for all my quick personal note-taking
  2. trello - I use this as a work kanban board, with the #now #next #later structure
  3. roam research - I use this for longer form notes, namely running 1:1 docs for each team member I meet with
  4. email - I switched back to gmail after google announced they're shutting down Inbox. I try to only check email 1x/day now, everything urgent gets directed through Slack
  5. product specs - all written in Google Docs. Same with high level team roadmap doc
  6. tactical product roadmap - all in a google spreadsheet, with a gantt chart view for reporting up
  7. wiki - still using confluence for discoverability