Test-n-Tell - tiny apps, Big ideas

  Some of the best product ideas I had as a novice PM were born while playing FIFA with my boss. Yes, you heard it right, collaboration might take very different forms and still lead to significant outcomes.

  I heard that somewhere and the phrase stuck with me. I guess many people would consider PM to be an interface to the engineering team. For the majority of business functions, an engineering department is kind of a black box. They send requests there and after a while, might get some features back (not necessarily in any way related to the things they've requested). 

I was working on a product vision lately. I was struggling with it and I couldn’t understand why. Problem areas seemed to be obvious, product category and competitors were identifiable so as perfect customers. And yet the overall vision appeared blurry, too generic and well, quite dull.

Some time ago, an aspiring product manager asked me what books she should read. I gave a couple of recommendations for books that helped me massively to get into product management craft. I've read dozens of PM-related books, but the following five are probably the most essential read list for anyone who would like to get into product management or just understand what PMs do.

Knowing what real personalization isn't , could we define what it is?

Remember Kathy Sierra's concept of a "badass users" ? A user doesn't care about your product, user cares about his context. He doesn't want to be better at using your product. He wants to be better at what he's doing. A user of a digital camera doesn't want to be the best at using this particular camera. He wants to make stunning pictures.

The Hero's Journey is a pattern of narrative that used in most books, movies, and stories. It is also known as "monomyth". Joseph Campbell, an American scholar, analyzed most of the ancient texts, legends, and tales. He found out that most of them follow quite a similar pattern. They tell a story of a "hero", who through the "journey" achieves great things and transform himself on the way. 

or  It's about users and their context - not about your product.