A summary of things you should know about The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management according to Jock Busuttil:

Introduction

In this episode Jock Busuttil takes a deep dive into his book, The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management, where he provides a roadmap for mastering product management and avoiding product failure.

In his book Busuttil shares real-life stories and experiences of other companies who are successful at product management and know what it takes to meet customers’ needs. The goal of the book is to help you improve product management skills, understand what a product manager does, know the difference between good and bad products, and increase the success rate of a product.

This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are new to the product management and looking for a step-by-step guide to creating, promoting, and selling a product that customers will love.

The Book’s Unique Quality (2:40)

The main difference is that most product management books are telling you about the process and while there are values in those kinds of books I also felt the need to explain to the reader the realities of product management as well.

The Best Way To Engage (3:29)

Each chapter is self-contained so if you want to read the five chapters in different orders you can.

The Reader’s Takeaway (14:08)

First and foremost it has to be empathy, the ability to put yourself as a product manager into the shoes of your users, the customers, the people in your organization that help you create this fantastic product. And understand what their needs are over yours because ultimately you are not going to be the target market.

A Deep Dive Into The Book (4:05)

The purpose of chapter one is about understanding what exactly product management is and what it all involves. It’s thinking about this concept of bouncing what I call three rings which refers to a diagram that divides up the practices of product management into three main areas. The three areas are user’s experience, technology, and the business and in the center of it all is the product manager. Really what all that means is that you are balancing very different needs of the user experiences needs and problems with the needs of the business and then also bouncing that with the technology and the people who are building and creating that particular product. Product management is one of those things that a lot of people have heard about but not necessarily know exactly what that means.And then we talk a little bit more about how product management evolved over the last 60 or 70 years to where we are now. With that is understanding that people’s individual parts in product management aren’t necessarily direct. It comes down to product management is really about the fundamentals of understanding users and their problems and being able to solve them with a viable, sustainable, profitable product.

That takes us into checking to make sure you are on the right path. We talk about the problems and the questions that you need to ask about whether there is a market for that particular product. Product management is not so much about managing product but it’s actually about managing the people involved in your product. We go through a variety of different people you’ll be most likely working with such as developers and designers. And then we talk about marketing and sales and what tough jobs they have and understand that they each have their own interesting quirks. It’s important to understand that you are working with all different specialists and without them you’d never be able to achieve the product you have.

From there we go into thinking about success and failure. So even if you do the right things there is still always that chance that your product won’t succeed. There are a number of things to increase your chances of success but it doesn’t necessarily ensure success.

The last thing we cover in the book is time management which is one of these soft skills that is so important because you are juggling all these different things and you need to be able to organize yourself.

NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 04:05

Notable Quotes From The Book (15:00)

“Good designers can take the complex and make it profoundly simple. Great designers will also stir your soul bewitch you with the beauty of their design.” – Jock Busuttil

The Credibility/Inspiration Of The Author (0:33)

I have been a product manager for over a decade and working in software for a few years longer. I have worked for a variety of different companies over the years ranging from small startups to huge multinational corporates and learned a great deal along the way. More recently I decided to branch out on my own and now running my own product management consultancy called Product People.

This was the book I wanted most myself when I was starting out in product management. Most of the books that were available told you about how to go about doing it but it didn’t tell you what it was really like. This book was a way for me to tell my story to others from someone who has actually been through the process personally.

Other Books Recommended By The Author (16:15)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

More Information About This Book and The Author

Buy The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management by Jock Busuttil on Amazon today
Visit iManageProducts.uk to read more articles by Jock on his blog
Follow Jock Busuttil on LinkedIn and Twitter

More Information About This Episode

Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud

Related books:

Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
The Maker Movement Manifesto by Mark Hatch
Disruption by Design by Paul Paetz

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Wade Danielson

Wade is a 4-time serial entrepreneur and is the Founder/Host of The Entrepreneurs Library. With a long time passion for reading books, Wade created an online resource and podcast for entrepreneurs who love to read personal and business development books. His long-term goal in life is to start an entrepreneurial home schooling program for children of business-minded families.