In their 2019 trends survey, the Product Management Festival found the range of different roles that product managers were in BEFORE they started in product management, and the list is quite long (see image below)

In their study, the transition from UX Designer to Product Manager represented nearly 2% of all transitions into product.

What skills do UX designers bring to product management?

There are two main reasons that there are considerable numbers of UX designers who make the transition into product management:

• Proximity to product roles
• Shared skills

When it comes to shared skills across roles, the following are perhaps most relevant:

• Good understanding of user experience
• Have a customer…

As part of our Getting Started in Product series, we look at some people who have already made the transition into a product role and ask them all about how they got started.

What’s your current role?

I’m a product consultant, undertaking contracts to support businesses with their product management.

What did you do before you got into Product Management?

I started out as a technical programmer and analyst.

How did you get your first product role?

I wanted to move into product management and worked with a professional recruiter to find me the right role for my skills.

What was your biggest challenge when you started in product management?

Always being aware of a customer’s focus. In other roles it’s easy to get into the solution and get work done.

What is the one piece of advice you’d give someone starting out in product?

Get Agile and/or Pragmatic Institute trained. …

There’s something about a New Year that makes us review the past and make plans for the future.

What are we going to achieve this year?

Get your dream job? Become more organized? Read more books? And of course, lose weight and drink less!

Sometimes we need a little push and once we’re rolling we need some support to stop us toppling over.

This is where this collection of books come in. They can be your guiding light what you want to achieve and your reminder to keep on that path.

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

Keith Ferrazzi

Is your plan for this year to get ahead in life? Climb the ladder to success? …

As part of our Getting Started in Product series, we look at some people who have already made the transition into a product role and ask them all about how they got started.

What’s your current role?

I’m a Senior Product Manager at T-Mobile, the telecommunications company .

What did you do before you got into Product Management?

I worked had a few roles in instructional design and technical writing within both financial services and retail.

How did you get your first product role?

I was in a business analyst role and when the organisation changed its working practices I transitioned across into product management.

What was your biggest challenge when you started in product management?

I think the biggest challenge was learning how to take ownership of something that previously you were just told what you should do with it. …

In their 2019 trends survey, the Product Management Festival found the range of different roles that product managers were in BEFORE they started in product management, and the list is quite long (see image below)

In their study, the transition from Project Manager to Product Manager was the most frequently followed career path. I’m one of the ones who had been a project manager in a previous life, although not directly before my first product management role.

What skills do project managers bring to product management?

There are two main reasons that there are considerable numbers of project managers who make the transition into product management:

• Proximity to product…

As part of our Getting Started in Product series, we look at some people who have already made the transition into a product role and ask them all about how they got started.

What’s your current role?

I’m an Associate Product Manager within a voice AI company.

What did you do before you got into Product Management?

I was a Machine Learning researcher within the same company.

How did you get your first product role?

I had some conversations with the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) within the organisation and then made the transition across the roles.

What was your biggest challenge when you started in product management?

When you gather feedback from users you end up with lots of unstructured information, and you need to adapt your mindset to allow you to create a problem statement from this feedback. …

We all have ideas for ways to improve things.

They might come to us when we’re queueing at Starbucks for our coffee, or when we’re standing in the shower.

We might hear some feedback from our customer and put this together with another customer’s feedback and get that spark of inspiration.

The difference between product people and non-product people is that product people do something about the idea. They want to take the idea and figure out whether it is viable and what it will take to get it off the ground.

We’re not alone, and there are a few books out there that helps us take that next step and go from idea to validated idea. …

As part of our Getting Started in Product series, we look at some people who have already made the transition into a product role and ask them all about how they got started.

What’s your current role?

I’m a Senior Product Owner for Advanced, a Health and Care software provide.

What did you do before you got into Product Management?

I worked in support desk roles within the health and care tech sector.

How did you get your first product role?

In my support roles I worked very closely with the product team, which gave me the opportunity to learn more and more from them, until an opening came up in their team, which I applied for and got.

What was your biggest challenge when you started in product management?

We often have a tendency to generate a solution upfront, so it was difficult to stop that and learn about ‘problem first’ approaches. …