Product Management Learning and Development
On this page
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 the Product Management Learning Hub in Level Up. You are welcome to explore content here but if you prefer a more modular, personalizable, and trackable portal, please visit Level Up.
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.
Recommended books and talks for all GitLab product managers
These books are highly recommended to be read by every product manager at GitLab:
- Marty Cagan: Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
Provides a general overview of Product Management
- Melissa Perry: Escaping the Build Trap
Describes how to build and operate a successful product team
- Eric Ries: The Lean Startup
Discusses how to leverage efficiency to achieve optimal outcomes.
Supporting materials for GitLab specific product manager competencies
Opportunity Canvases
GitLab’s Chief Product Officer shares insights on what makes an opportunity canvas successful in a 10 minute video:
Overview and Example Canvases by Stage Maturity
- Opportunity Canvas Overview
- Minimal: Translating alerts into actionable incidents is challenging
- Complete: Remote and Virtual Package Repositories
- Loveable: Plan: Project Management, Fix Groups and Projects
“Lite” Opportunity Canvas
- When and how to use an Opportunity Canvas “Lite”
- Example: Opportunity Canvas Lite: Parent-child pipelines default behavior change
Example Videos of Canvas Reviews
Prioritization at GitLab
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.
General Prioritization Guidance
Product Management Peer Mentorship Program
Overview
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:
- Customer discovery
- Iteration & efficiency in the build track
- Setting and evolving Performance Indicators
- Sisense skills
- Communicating vision and roadmap with well articulated prioritization
Proposal
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.
Pilot
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.
Using the Career Development Framework during Peer Mentorship
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.
Growth and Development processes
The general Growth and Development benefits are maintained by the Total Rewards team. The following make it more specific for Product Managers.
The product team has specific processes for the trainings outlined below. To get support for a new training, please follow the general guidelines for Growth and Development.
Continuous Interviewing course at Product Talk
The Continuous Interviewing course is part of the Product Management onboarding.
Reforge membership
GitLab reimburses its team members the yearly Reforge membership fees as long as the GitLab team member takes part and if needed organizes the following activities related to their studies:
- enrolls in at least one programme, preferably a cohort during the year
- finds at least one more GitLab team member who enrolls into the same cohort/programme
- organizes a study group either with the other GitLab team member to follow along the cohort/programme
- the study group is expected to discuss all the Reforge topics with a special focus on their applicability within GitLab
- the study group can be a Reforge study group
- the GitLab team members in the study group propose process changes and create analytics requests
If you are part of the Product team and are interested in a Reforge membership, we are planning to set up a team plan for a discounted rate, see details in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/Product/-/issues/5135.
General Product Management learning content
This content is also available in a trackable format in Level Up.
This content is divided into five key competencies for Product Managers.
π‘ Discovery Β Β Β π Delivery Β Β Β π Business Acumen Β Β Β π¬ Communication Β Β Β π€ Team Management
π‘ Discovery
π‘ User research
Quick reads and videos
Deeper dive
- Introduction to Modern Product Discovery
- Just Enough Research (59 min video)
Online courses
Books
- Steve Krug: Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems
- Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson: The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
- Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow
- Erika Hall: Just Enough Research
π‘ Customer interviewing
Quick reads and videos
- Continuous interviewing at GitLab
- ‘Get in the Van’ and Other Tips for Getting Meaningful Customer Feedback
- The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions
- Finding, preparing for, and nagivating Customer Calls as a Product Manager at GitLab
Deeper dive
- Teresa Torres: Adopting Continuous Product Discovery Practices
- Product Talk: Customer Interviews Articles
Online courses
Books
- Interviewing for Research by Andrew Travers
- Talking to Humans (alternate free pdf)
- The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
- Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights
π‘ Jobs to be done
Quick reads and videos
- GitLab Jobs to be Done (JTBD) Overview
- Clayton Christensen - Understanding the Job (5 min video)
- Know Your Customersβ βJobs to Be Doneβ
Deeper dive
- GitLab Jobs to be Done (JTBD) Deep Dive
- Bob Moesta & Chris Spiek - Uncovering the Jobs to be Done (57 min video)
- Tony Ulwick - Customer Centered Innovation (57 min video)
- Xavier Russo - A step-by-step guide to using Outcome Driven Innovataion
Online courses
Books
- Clayton M. Christensen et al: Competing Against Luck
- Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done (free ebook download)
π‘ Lean product development
Quick reads and videos
Deeper dive
- Melissa Perri - Lean Product Management (42 min video)
- GitLab Remote Design Sprint guidelines
- How to Run Amazing Remote Design Sprints! (60 min video)
Online courses
Books
- Eric Ries: The Lean Startup
- Jake Knapp: Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
- Ash Maurya: Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
π‘ Growth, Product-led Growth, and Experimentation
Quick reads and videos
- How to launch product experiments at GitLab (30 min video)
- GitLab Growth Team Coffee & Learn Sessions
- Product Managers: It’s Time to Move from Whole Product to Product-led Growth
- 10 Statistics Traps in A/B Testing: The Ultimate Guide for Optimizers
- 5 Common Threats to Your A/B Testβs Validity
- Matching Price to Value: 3 Lessons in Monetization from Menlo Ventures (30 min video)
Deeper dive
Online courses
Books
- Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself
- Sean Ellis: Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
- Nir Eyal: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
- Trusworthy Online Controlled Experiments
- Intercom: The Growth Handbook (free ebook download)
π‘ Design
Quick reads and videos
- Julie Zhuo: How to Work with Designers
- Jess Eddy: What do designers really want from product managers?
- Jared Spool: Using the Kano Model to Build Delightful UX (45 min video)
- GitLab Kano Model and Feature Prioritization Survey
Deeper dive
Online courses
- LinkedIn Learning: Learning Design Thinking
- LinkedIn Learning: Accessibility for Web Design
- LinkedIn Learning: Dieter Rams: Principles of Good Design
Books
- Don Norman: The Design of Everyday Things
- Steve Krug: Don’t Make Me Think
- Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook
- The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide
- Jeff Gothelf: Lean UX
π Delivery
π User stories
Quick reads and videos
Deeper dive
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Online courses
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Books
π Backlog management
Quick reads and videos
- Brandon Chu: Ruthless Prioritization
- Sean McBride: RICE: Simple prioritization for product managers
- Ash Maurya: Love the Problem, Not Your Solution
- Launch mode vs iterate mode
Deeper dive
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Online courses
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Books
π Working with Engineering
Quick reads and videos
- The Engineering Manager: The relationship with Product
- Visha Soni: A Practical Prioritization Approach for Technical Debt
- Rajat Harlalka: Why You Should Invest in Relationships With Your Engineering Team
- PM & EM: Rules of Engagement
Deeper dive
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Online courses
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Books
Please contribute your favorite resources here
π£ Iteration
Quick reads and videos
- What does Iteration mean for GitLab?
- What is a Minimal Viable Change?
- Product Processes: Iteration Strategies
- A video by Sid and Leif on iteration (24 min video)
- Product Leadership discusses examples of iteration that they’ve learned from (19 min video)
- Des Traynor: Start with a cupcake
Deeper dive
- Join the iteration office hours GitLab Team Meeting: Calendar
- Watch the videos from the Iteration playlist
π Business acumen
π Product strategy
Quick reads and videos
- Marty Cagan: Vision Vs. Strategy
- Des Traynor: Product strategy means saying no
- Ken Norton’s Discipline of No
Deeper dive
- Des Traynor: Product Strategy Revisited (54 min video)
Online courses
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Books
- Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers
- Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation
π Competitive analysis
Quick reads and videos
Deeper dive
Online courses
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Books
Please contribute your favorite resources here
π KPIs, Metrics, and OKRs
Quick reads and videos
- John Doerr: Why the secret to success is setting the right goals (5 min video)
- David Skok: SaaS Metrics 2.0 β A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters
- Benefits of OKRs
- Getting Started with OKRs
- Writing Basic OKRs
- GitLab - How to write OKRs
- Ally for OKRs - Overview for Product (10 min video)
Deeper dive
- Financial Modeling for Product Managers (60 min video)
- 10 Reads for Data Scientists Getting Started with Business Models
Online courses
Books
- Christina Wodtke: Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results ( OKRs )
- Douglas W. Hubbard: How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intagibles in Business
- Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics
π¬ Communication
π¬ Relationships with customers
Quick reads and videos
- How can I say this? Podcast
- Finding, preparing for, and nagivating Customer Calls as a Product Manager at GitLab
Deeper dive
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Online courses
Books
π¬ Communicating to inspire, align, and activate
Quick reads and videos
- Paul Graham: Write Simply
- Mastering communication: a product managerβs superpower
- Connor Murphy on how his team uses a combination of GitLab, Loom, Notion, and Figma to collaborate async between PM, Design, and Engineering (5 min video)
Deeper dive
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Online courses
Books
Please contribute your favorite resources here
π¬ Presentations, prepared and adhoc
Quick reads and videos
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Deeper dive
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Online courses
Books
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Examples
π€ Team management
π€ Stakeholder management
Quick reads and videos
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Deeper dive
- Rosemary King: Stakeholders, let ’em in (20 min video)
Online courses
- Managing Project Stakeholders (LinkedIn Learning course)
Books
Please contribute your favorite resources here
π€ Cross-functional team management
Quick reads and videos
- HBR: What cross functional teams need to succeed
- HBR: High performing teams need psychological safety
Deeper dive
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Online courses
Books
π€ Direct team management
New Manager Buddy Program
- For new Group Managers at GitLab, we have an buddy program that matches the new Group Manager with a Senior leader (Director or above) in the Product team that is not in their direct reporting chain. This is an optional program to help new managers understand GitLab management process, find a sounding board to discuss challenging situations in a safe space without judgement, and generally learn management techniques. Although this is targeted to new managers (typically first time managers), it is open to those who are becoming a manager for the first time at GitLab but have been managers elsewhere.
Quick reads and videos
Deeper dive
- The New Manager Death Spiral (30 min video)
Online courses
Books
- Kim Scott: Radical Candor
- Michael Lopp: Managing Humans
- Julie Zhuo: The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
- First Round Essentials: Management (free ebook download)
π€ Leadership and influence
Quick reads and videos
Deeper dive
- LinkedIn Learning: Executive Leadership (1h 19m total)
- LinkedIn Learning: Being a Good Mentor (1 hour total)
Online courses
Books
- Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
- Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
- Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
π§βπ» DevOps
Kubernetes
Quick reads and videos
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Deeper dive
- Kubernetes for Product Managers
Online courses
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Books
Please contribute your favorite resources here
Product management thought leadership
Blogs, videos and podcasts and more…
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:
Blogs
- https://svpg.com/articles/
- https://www.intercom.com/blog/product-and-design/
- https://producthabits.com/blog/
- https://www.mindtheproduct.com/
- https://cutlefish.substack.com/
Podcasts
Newsletters
Other
- Mind the Product Slack channel
- GitLab team member Viktor Nagy on Twitter
- Product League
- Product School (YouTube Channel)
- Women In Product (YouTube Channel)
Thought leaders and influencers
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:
How to contribute to the Product L & D Hub
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:
- Product Management Learning Hub in Level Up, which is a more modular, personalizable, and trackable portal
- This page, which serves as the required content library that feeds the Product Management page in Level Up
In order to add content to Product Management Learning Hub, the content must first be added to and exist on this page. Then, the content is added to Level Up.
If thereβs 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 Level Up 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.
Product learning evangelists
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