Principles - Processes - Categorization - GitLab the Product - PM Responsibilities - Being a PM - Performance Indicators - Leadership
Welcome to Learning and Development for Product Management at GitLab! This page serves as the content library that feeds GitLab Learn for Product Management. You are welcome to explore content here but if you prefer a more modular, personalizable, and trackable portal, please visit GitLab Learn. This page, together with GitLab Learn for Product Management is what we consider and refer to as GitLab's "Product L & D Hub".
The resources in the Product L & D Hub are meant to support product managers to explore, learn and grow at their own pace. We aim to collect content that spans various skill levels, as well as various levels of depth/commitment. It is recommended that product managers engage with the resources here to help them have a successful journey at GitLab and in their product career as a whole.
Most of the resources here are free but any content requiring payment can be reimbursed following the GitLab reimbursement policies.
Over time, we will add content to directly support GitLab's product management competencies, CDF and product development flow. We understand that the evolving product management space requires continuous learning, and GitLab is committed to providing the time needed for in-depth learning too as part of your working time. You are encouraged to ask your manager to help you carve out time for Learning and Development.
These books are highly recommended to be read by every product manager at GitLab:
GitLab's Chief Product Officer shares insights on what makes an opportunity canvas successful in a 10 minute video:
GitLab's Product and Engineering leaders discuss a change to our model of prioritization where for some teams we are allocating a percentage of capacity for making engineering improvements focused on medium to long term security, reliability, performance areas.
Nicole shares her approach towards prioritization of tech debt with her Engineering counterparts in these discussions with Mike and Olivier.
James discusses how he balances Error Budgets, Tech Debt, and other priorities with Engineering Counterparts, Scott.
Fabian and Nick discuss PM/EM collaboration on the Geo team and the importance of empathy building between PMs and EMs.
We have a team of very talented Product Managers whom are all interested in up-leveling their leadership skills whether that be to Principal PM or into People Management. An important skill for either track is the ability to coach and mentor others. Right now, an overwhelming majority of the team is at the Senior level. In a traditional mentor program, people are assigned the role of mentor and mentee. Since most people are looking to mentor others, we have too many mentors and not enough mentees
In addition to growing leadership/mentoring skills, PMs also have other areas that they need coaching on, such as:
Establish a Peer mentorship program where PMs are paired based on respective strengths and areas that need growth. PMs can coach each other on the skill they are respectively strong in.
This is going to require PMs to volunteer as participants. Management will need to anonymously gather strengths and weaknesses for participants and work together to create pairs.
We set up pairs between PMs who have volunteered and run an 8 week pilot where PMs meet each week. GMPs can assess skill development over the course of the pilot as a potential measure of success.
The pilot will run during FY22Q3. This gives us two months to prepare by gathering volunteers, assessing skills, setting up pairs for the pilot, and running a crash course in coaching & mentoring. The pilot will run for the first two months of Q3 and we will reflect during the final month to allow for program adjustments and continuation.
Following a retro on the pilot we can decide to continue it in rotations moving forward.
We will be planning the Pilot Program in this epic.
Product Managers are all evaluated using the CDF and it can be a great tool to use as a way to discuss how each person is performing in context to the CDF. If you are looking to improve in a certain area of your CDF, the peer mentorship space can be a great place to seek mentorship. Please note that CDFs are confidential documents that are kept between team members and their management lines, however, for the purpose of mentorship, team members can choose to share relevant portions. If any feedback about the CDF arises, please discuss the feedback with your manager or open an MR to the CDF handbook page and tag gl-product-leadership for review.
This content is also available in a trackable format in GitLab Learn.
This content is divided into five key competencies for Product Managers.
💡 Discovery 🚀 Delivery 📈 Business Acumen 💬 Communication 🤝 Team Management
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There is a lot of amazing content and ongoing trends in the world of product development. Subscribing to blogs, video channels and other ongoing content streams is a great way to get inspiration on best practices and product innvoation with your team. Here are some recommendations on where to start:
One of the best ways to stay in the know is to follow people! There are a lot of folks openly sharing their ideas and best practices. We encourage you to follow and exchange ideas with people who inspire you. Here are some recommendations on where to start:
Keeping our Product L & D Hub robust and relevant is a team effort. We encourage to you to contribute as you come across resources that are helpful to you. And if there are resources in the Product L & D Hub that are outdated or you disagree with, we encourage you to bring it to our attention as well.
There are two components to the Product L & D hub:
In order to add content to GitLab Learn for Product Management, the content must first be added to and exist on this page. Then, the content is added to GitLab Learn by learning evangelists and curators.
If there’s content you want to add to or remove from this library, simply raise an MR and add any of the product learning evangelists listed below as Reviewer. Tell us in the MR whether you're recommending the resources for just the library or if you'd like to see it added to GitLab Learn for Product Management as well. Details explaining what you value about the content and how you think it's helpful should be added to the description of the MR. Please add milestone and labels product operations product handbook and prodops:release to the MR.
