How To Be A Good Product Manager was a blog that provided resources and tips on good product management practices. (It was one of the first product management blogs and one of the longest-running product management blogs!) While it focuses more on managing technical and online products, most of the concepts are appropriate for broader product management purposes.
- All of the posts here were written by me, Jeff Lash — currently VP, Global Product Management at Forrester and previously (among other things) the head of product management research and advisory at SiriusDecisions (since acquired by Forrester).
- For nearly 6 years (December 2006 – July 2012), I posted nearly unique 200 tips on all aspects of product management.
- From September 2012 – February 2021, my posts instead were recaps of product management posts I wrote for the SiriusDecisions (and later Forrester) blog, information on other product management presentations I was doing, and various product management tips.
Other Places You Can Find Me Talking About Product Management
- I’ve delivered hundreds of presentations on Product Management. A few of these are recorded and available for viewing, including:
- Best Practices on Product Roadmaps, from Productized 2019 (Lisbon, Portugal)
- What World Class Product Management Teams Do Differently, from Product Tank San Francisco
- Product Strategy Basics, for Product School
- I’ve been a guest on many Podcasts talking about Product Management, including:
- Product Leader’s Journey: Season 3, Episode 4 — Benchmarking Product Management
- Product People, Episode 21: B2B vs. B2C Product Management
- Product Love Podcast, November 6, 2019
- The Everyday Innovator, Episode 127
- Design Your Thinking, Episode 48
- The Schmidt List, Episode 40
- Ready Product Radio, Episode 18
- I’ve also been interviewed a lot about Product Management, including:
- I post product management tips on LinkedIn — you can follow me there to see my tips in your feed. I posted one product management tip a day in both 2021 and 2023; you can find those tips using the #ProdMgmtDailyTip hashtag.
- Until late 2022 I was posting regular product management thoughts on Twitter (now X) as @jefflash.
You Can Also Find Me Talking About User Experience
Before I was in product management, I spent 5+ years working in UX.
- In 2007, I co-wrote a series of articles in on Transitioning from User Experience to Product Management (part 1, part 2) for Boxes and Arrows — there’s also an accompanying podcast interview.
- I presented on User Experience and Product Management: Two Peas in the Same Pod? at the 2011 St. Louis User Experience conference
More About How To Be A Good Product Manager
The views and opinions expressed on this site are strictly mine and are not to be representative of my current employer or any of my past employers.
For my “original” Good/Bad Product Manager posts starting in 2006, in most cases I came up with ideas for the postings based on a “good” product management experience, and then I tried to think of the exact opposite approach that would be a “bad” thing to do. Other times they are based on examples, case studies, or others’ experiences. “Bad” examples should not be interpreted to be based on product managers I have worked with in the past or with whom I am currently working. (Hopefully, though, they are not representative of product managers I will work with in the future!)
From 2008-2012, I also ran Ask a Good Product Manager (no longer online), which provided real answers to real product management questions that were submitted by readers.