clementkao
In your mind, what would a "rubber meets the road" kind of resource look like? What sorts of questions would it address?
I'm a non-technical product manager, and I've heard the same sentiment with the engineers that I work with. My engineers want business context and user context - they don't need someone to provide technical guidance.
To address your questions directly:
1) The most helpful skill in an engineer is the skill of speaking up. When I reflect on the dozens of engineers I've worked with, I consistently find that the ones who provided the most value were the ones who would question me constructively.
My specs aren't perfect, because I don't have a detailed understanding of the technical constraints. I love it when engineers tell me why my spec won't work, and then provide multiple alternatives for how to get the spirit of my spec to work.
As for how to help you look good - I really appreciate it when engineers honestly keep me informed about their bandwidth. That way, as I keep stakeholders in the loop, I can accurately set their expectations.
It's never helpful when engineers say "I can complete these 15 tasks by next week", and wind up only completing 2. On the flip side, it's equally unhelpful when engineers say "I can complete only 2 tasks by next week", then wind up knocking out the entire backlog.
2) I can't speak clearly to "technical adviser"-type roles, unfortunately, since I'm not technical to start with. That being said, the technical folks who interface with management and executives are typically managers of managers of engineers.
In other words - the engineers who drive the technical vision of the company are also the ones who are directly responsible for their teams' execution on the tactical work.
The key challenge there is that while scientists are expected to produce papers and to review papers, product managers are not expected to do so.
We're expected to manage our products (which makes lots of sense), but that leaves us little time to curate a neutral and high-quality repository of product management knowledge.
While I've done my best to share my knowledge in my spare time (I've published 50+ articles at Product Manager HQ), I strongly believe there's a systemic challenge at play here.
Many of my colleagues are insanely good at what they do, yet they haven't written any articles on product management because that behavior isn't incentivized.
I've written 50+ articles on Product Manager HQ, and the feedback I've heard from my readers thus far is that each one has been uniquely insightful, covering topics that they haven't yet seen discussed by other blogs.
I'm doing my best to close knowledge gaps - would love to hear what's on your mind!
I've been doing my best to try to share my knowledge as a product manager (disclaimer, I write for Product Manager HQ), but that's been a challenge - it takes anywhere from 8-20 hours for me to pull together a thoughtful article, especially because I'm keenly aware of the fact that there's an overwhelming number of low-quality product management articles. I've been lucky to have time on weekends to write, and I know that's not a luxury that every product manager has.
Many of my peers and colleagues are hesitant to jump into writing, specifically because they aren't incentivized to do so. (I'm incentivized by my personal mission "to make other people's lives happier, easier, and better", but personal missions can only incentivize a single person...)
Hackathons are a great way for engineers to share their abilities with others outside of their day-to-day work. I wonder whether there are similar outlets for PMs - maybe some sort of open-mic for best practices, or a company-sponsored "blog day" where every PM sits down for the day and pulls together learnings?
I've seen that boards/forums and websites/blogs are distinct categories of resources.
I haven't found a board/forum that really helped me to grow as a product manager yet. My hypothesis is that because there are so many different kinds of product managers, it's difficult to hit any kind of critical mass of invested users who can all answer each other's questions. Even a forum with thousands of PM's may not succeed, because there are so many kinds of product managers (B2B vs B2C, web vs mobile, API vs UI, internal vs external, etc.)
That said, there are Slack communities that are a bit more lively than boards/forums, but even then the user ratios are usually heavily skewed towards newer PMs rather than more tenured PMs.
I strongly believe there are great websites/blogs, however. Two of my favorites (again, bias warning):
1) Product Manager HQ (https://www.productmanagerhq.com/) - generally relevant content for aspiring PMs, new PMs, and experienced PMs. Not as much content for Heads of Product, unfortunately.
2) Black Box of Product Management (https://blackboxofpm.com/) - solid resource for directors of product and higher.
My favorite analogy here is the one about cancer - cancer isn't one disease, it's thousands of diseases that all look the same on the surface, but are really different when you dive in. A cure for skin cancer doesn't really help get you closer to a cure for lung cancer, as an example.
Specifically for your partner - what kind of product management is she doing? B2B or B2C? Customer-facing products or internal products? Web or mobile?
The more specificity you have, the more likely you'll be able to find more relevant professional development resources for her particular flavor of product management.
That being said - once a PM hits a particular threshold of experience and self-awareness, they can generally come up with their own professional development track, though it always helps to have a mentor.