I am curious to know about the traits of the best PM you ever worked with — what set them apart? On the flip side, what about the most difficult PM you ever worked with — what were the biggest challenges? — Asked by Product Manager @ SAP Dear PM…

I’ve been a PM for 6 years. Due to the recent layoffs I’ve been thinking about how to make myself more valuable for employers. I don’t want to be a developer but I love working with devs and figuring out how things work so I want to start transitioning into…

“How do I future-proof my role as a PM to ensure that my capabilities/contributions are keeping up with the evolving best practices in engineering and expectations of my PM role?” — Asked by a BizDev manager at Brillio Dear BizDev manager, Well, first things first, let’s define “future-proof” to mean…

While product managers focus on the customer problem and solution (the what, the why, and what the customer experience should be), the core focus of engineering is the technical implementation details. These are two completely different perspectives. Bridging this gap is essential but it can be a messy process and…

Important Note: This article contains core technical terms and concepts in data, deployment, and software engineering that you’ll need prior knowledge of. If you’re unfamiliar with these fundamental terms and concepts, consider getting technical training through Skiplevel.co. Why is understanding data processing important for product managers? As a product manager, you’ve likely heard the terms data and business analytics…

Photo credit: Christina Morillo Companies and teams are increasingly realizing how important technical literacy is in product managers and the benefits to team efficiency, effectiveness, and overall team cohesion. This in part explains the industry’s shift towards conducting technical interviews as part of the overall interview process for product managers. …

Every great product manager uses a number of SaaS tools to be effective in their role, but it’s not always clear what types of tools and which specific SaaS product(s) you should use as a PM. While the answer depends a lot on the team, the company, the product, and…

Someone recently asked me: “What’s the one thing PM & dev teams should implement to save a whole lot of cross-team time and headache?” I have two answers to this question: first, having great documentation & Standard Operating Procedures (duh). Second, it’s setting up a *banging* data dashboard. Yep, bet…

Feature image courtesy of CoWomen Recently, a product manager in the Skiplevel community asked for tips on writing stories/requirements to help developers make better decisions around improving latency. What a great question! The business requirements doc (BRD) and user stories are the two main ways we collaborate with dev teams…