How do you stay up-to-date with product skills as a product manager?

I always recommend to product folks to balance "hard knowledge" and "soft knowledge". Hard knowledge: - Books written by thought leaders (Marty Cagan, Teresa Torres, Melissa Perri, etc.) - Scientific books about qualitative and quantitative research applied to social sciences for examples - etc. Soft knowledge: - blogs and newsletters - podcasts - etc. But passively following the industry trends and best practices won't lead your far. The best approach is to immediately write down a summary of your learnings and the steps you'll follow to apply them. By keeping track of this, you'll become a robust product manager in no time!

One way would be participate in product talks and events where people talk about their strategy, perceptions etc. At the end of the day, having a good knowledge over people’s perceptions will lead us to discovery and innovation.

I have been following the below which actually helped me in transitioning into Product. - Start questioning yourself on the products that you use daily, be it a digital one or non-digital. - I started off with @Inshorts App which kind of changed my perspective of looking at newspapers. I was able to convince myself and my parents to download a "free" app and get news in a scrolling fashion. - What is Inshorts ? Why do I need it ? Is it entirely replacing the paper news ? Is it catering to specific age group? Is the app able to hold me as a customer for long tenure ? What are the limitations ? - If you are able to get the answers for these questions from your family members and they are convinced. You've done a good job as a Product Manager!

Additionally, keeping an eye on the best product companies can also be quite insightful. It's very useful to analyze the features they are releasing, the way they launch these features, and the way they communicate, do they run survey post launch, are there anything interesting about them? This can reveal new approaches and methods that no one has yet talked or written about publicly

There are a lot of great books, articles, podcasts, and other materials of knowledge. The key is to always try to think about how what you read, heard, and learned can be applied to your team, your product, and the company to make sure that the knowledge gathered is useful and sticks with you.

Usually what you get from podcasts, books, and stories online is not fully tuned to your business size. Therefore, joining (or creating) a small community of similar-sized companies will really help you tune your product strategy and make you understand what could work and does not work for other businesses (and why!). Learn from each other, and if possible, make it offline and create an interactive cohort of people to depend on each other.

Staying updated with product skills means diving into vibrant product management communities, both online and offline. Online Engagement: Become an active member of forums like Product Management Stack Exchange, Product Manager HQ, and Reddit's r/ProductManagement. Offline Events: Attend local meetups, workshops, and conferences organized by product organizations and associations. Collaboration: Exchange ideas and collaborate with fellow product managers. Start by joining one online and one offline product management community today. Engage actively, contribute your expertise, and build valuable connections. These communities will fuel your growth as a product manager.

Never stop learning. Always be looking to grow. There are so many great product resources available in the market now. Pendo and Product School have proven FREE certificates that help aspiring, new, and seasoned PMs grow their knowledge base and skills.

In my professional stint, I believe certification do helped me to understand tons of jargons, frameworks & tools in days. I personally gone through the below certifications & could vouch for them that they are really good for aspiring & newbie product managers: 1. Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO): The PSPO certification, offered by Scrum.org, is a valuable credential for product owners and product managers in Scrum teams. 2.Certified SAFe® Product Owner/Product Manager (SAFe® POPM) 3.Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) 4.Certified Product Marketing Manager (CPMM) Among all the above PSPO II is the most enriching in content. I can't give the links for each certification because of text limit. Please check the post in my profile.

Lifelong learning is essential in product management; courses and certifications keep professionals updated and competitive. Both online and offline platforms offer comprehensive trainings, from mastering the basics to understanding advanced product strategies. Institutions like Coursera, Udemy, and General Assembly have established a strong reputation for fostering skill development in the product domain. Pursuing certifications from renowned organizations like Pragmatic Institute or AIPMM can provide an edge and validate one's expertise in the industry.

If you are a working professional, best way to practice product skills is to apply them in your own respective jobs, whether it is a product manager job or not. If you are a fresher, try building a personal project to sharpen your product skills. Identify a problem around you and try starting with a simple PRD and wireframe. If you are interested develop the idea into a minimal prototype. This will help you in demonstrating your product capabilities in interviews as well. Participating in product teardown and competitions by product communities can also be a great idea for people looking to sharpen their PM skills.

I believe that experimenting and implementing new ideas and practices in your projects is the best way to keep yourself up-to-date with product skills. 3 ways you can approach this: 1. Define Clear Goals: Use the SMART framework to set clear goals. It can be improving collaboration or increasing customer engagement 2. Document Your Process: Keep detailed records of the changes you're making, the methods you're testing, and the outcomes you observe. This documentation will be valuable for analysis and sharing insights with your team. 3. Seek Feedback: Regularly seek feedback from peers, mentors, and team members. Constructive feedback can help you identify areas for improvement and guide your learning efforts.

Every new product/feature you come across Start thinking about these aspects 1. Who are the core users ? 2. What problem is it solving ? 3. Is this the most efficient way to solve ? 4. How are others solving similar problems ? 5. How are they measuring if the problem is being solved ? And you would have discovered a lot about what’s happening in product space

Mentorship or coaching is an excellent way to challenge yourself and how you approach your work. It helps you to get frequent and personalised feedback on your daily life as a product manager. It's usually a great compliment to reading blogs/books or listening to podcasts, as it helps to put things into perspective in your context. Product folks often need clarification when they read thought leadership books such as Inspired or Empower and then confront them with their reality. It's great to get the perspective of more senior folks to decode situations and finds a way to progress on a personal journey.

Its paramount to find mentors who are willing to help and provide authentic feedback. My mentors have told me about how they would have approached certain problem, about tools/tech that helped them, skills that I should work on. Gave real life insights to collaborate, work efficiently and create impact in my day to day PM career

Learning new things is a part of activating your mind into product thinking—more of a 'mindset' than one-off skill. One hack that helps would be to take seemingly everyday headline/observation and rethinking on what would have caused this. Sort of your own root-cause analysis. And how you'd be redefining it if you had to do it. You could also see some of these as conversation threads on LinkedIn & X - always looking for comments from other PMs like you is a way to get access to their mindsets. It's sometimes easy to diss or overly agree with observations, but spending time to dig through possibilities cultivates it as a habit rather than just a PM flex skill.

Exploring the synergies between products of different industries can also turn out as a great idea. Don't limit your knowledge to your existing domain and try to expand the horizon. As an example, if a PM working in a D2C company focuses only on selling the product, he/she might fall behind on an opportunity to explore the possibilities of incorporating AI or chatbots to the platform, missing out an opportunity for building a great user experience. Try exploring new domains and how that can help improve you as a PM and also your product.

The most important thing you can do is get out of your office and “put your feet on the floor “! That means becoming the product expert by spending time developing relationships along the entire process. Start with design engineers, lab technicians, personnel physically making the product, and end with the customer!

Honestly, ChatGPT is amazing for Product. It can define problems, suggest teams, list user requirements, write user stories with acceptance criteria. In Gherkin. In code. It will analyse your stakeholder interview transcripts, can take APIs from a variety of internal and external sources. Any PM not using generative AI in the future will be 10 steps behind.