The road to great
product management
A journey to product management, drawn from my own experience across product roles in startups and enterprise. You'll find the key crafts an excellent PM needs — each a stop you can learn, in roughly the order it starts to matter — and updated for how AI is reshaping the role.
Foundations
The non-negotiables every PM needs.
Writing good product specs
bothThe doc that aligns ten people before a single line of code.
Scoping & cutting
bothDeciding what NOT to build. The most underrated PM skill.
Discovery & validation
bothKnowing you're building the right thing before you build it.
SoonFirst-principles thinking
bothDerive the right product from the customer truth up — not from what competitors shipped.
Core craft
The daily engine of the job.
Prioritization
bothRICE, value-vs-effort, and the conversation the framework forces.
Roadmapping
bothA communication tool, not a promise.
SoonWorking with engineering
bothEarning trust with the people who actually build it.
SoonInfluence without authority
enterpriseOwning outcomes across teams you don't manage.
SoonMastery
Where you become a multiplier.
Metrics & outcomes
bothOutcomes over output; the one metric that matters.
Soon0→1 vs 1→N
startup ⇄ entBuilding something new vs scaling something working — different jobs.
SoonThese are the evergreen craft. For point-in-time takes on where the discipline is heading — AI-DLC, the absorption gap — see Thinking.