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Product Management for UX People

product management spot image

From Designing to Thriving in a Product World

By Christian Crumlish

Published: March 2022
Paperback: 240 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1933820-71-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1933820-28-6

User experience designers and researchers often struggle with the idea of product management—as a peer discipline, a job title, a future career, or even what the title entails. But surprisingly, there is no roadmap for designers who want to understand what it takes to manage products and services. At least, not until now.

Enter Christian Crumlish with his book, Product Management for UX People. An experienced product manager himself, Crumlish delves into the intersections and gaps between design and product management—for designers who work with product managers and designers who want to become product managers. You’ll find all the answers to your questions about this intriguing career.

Who Should Read This Book

UX professionals who are curious about product management and want to know which of their skills might apply to the products role if they are considering a career change. Any UX person who works on a product team and wants to figure out how best to work in that context. A UX practitioner or manager who is considering a transition to product management and needs guidance about the responsibilities and career possibilities.

Takeaways

  • Define what product management means for your business and what product managers actually do.
  • Apply your skills as a UX practitioner to the product manager role.
  • Learn how product managers work with engineers to keep teams aligned and take responsibility for business outcomes.
  • Figure out how product managers, UX practitioners, and teams can work together effectively.
  • Pinpoint how to say “no” to stakeholders and make difficult choices between competing priorities
  • Read compelling stories about the author’s experiences, as well as other people’s stories in “From the Trenches” sidebars.
  • Be sure to read the “44 Signs You Are Becoming a ‘Real’ Product Manager.”
  • Figure out how best to work with data analytics for growth, engagement, and retention in your business.
  • Learn how to test hypotheses with real-world experiments.
  • Discuss profit and loss models, revenue models, and how to break even.
  • Look for “Key Insights” at the end of each chapter, which highlight the important points to remember.

User experience designers and researchers often struggle with the idea of product management—as a peer discipline, a job title, a future career, or even what the title entails. But surprisingly, there is no roadmap for designers who want to understand what it takes to manage products and services. At least, not until now.

Enter Christian Crumlish with his book, Product Management for UX People. An experienced product manager himself, Crumlish delves into the intersections and gaps between design and product management—for designers who work with product managers and designers who want to become product managers. You’ll find all the answers to your questions about this intriguing career.

Who Should Read This Book

UX professionals who are curious about product management and want to know which of their skills might apply to the products role if they are considering a career change. Any UX person who works on a product team and wants to figure out how best to work in that context. A UX practitioner or manager who is considering a transition to product management and needs guidance about the responsibilities and career possibilities.

Takeaways

  • Define what product management means for your business and what product managers actually do.
  • Apply your skills as a UX practitioner to the product manager role.
  • Learn how product managers work with engineers to keep teams aligned and take responsibility for business outcomes.
  • Figure out how product managers, UX practitioners, and teams can work together effectively.
  • Pinpoint how to say “no” to stakeholders and make difficult choices between competing priorities
  • Read compelling stories about the author’s experiences, as well as other people’s stories in “From the Trenches” sidebars.
  • Be sure to read the “44 Signs You Are Becoming a ‘Real’ Product Manager.”
  • Figure out how best to work with data analytics for growth, engagement, and retention in your business.
  • Learn how to test hypotheses with real-world experiments.
  • Discuss profit and loss models, revenue models, and how to break even.
  • Look for “Key Insights” at the end of each chapter, which highlight the important points to remember.

Testimonials

Table of Contents

Foreword by Matt LeMay
Chapter 1: What Exactly Does a Product Manager Do?
Chapter 2: Do You Want to Be a Product Manager?
Chapter 3: UX Skills that Carry Over
Chapter 4: Wrangling Engineers
Chapter 5: The Business of Product is Business
Chapter 6: Product Analytics: Growth, Engagement, Retention
Chapter 7: Testing Hypotheses with Experiments
Chapter 8: Getting the Money
Chapter 9: Healthy Collaborative Tension on the Product UX Spectrum
Chapter 10: Roadmaps and How to Say “No”
Chapter 11: Chief Information Architect

FAQ

These common questions and their short answers are taken from Christian Crumlish’s book Product Management for UX People: From Designing to Thriving in a Product World. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.

  1. Can I become a product manager and continue to do a lot of design work every day?
    Unlikely. Maybe in a small start-up where they need you to do two jobs at once, but product managers are not designers and the day- to-day work of the two roles differs significantly, as explained in Chapter 2, despite the large overlapping areas of shared concern.

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Sample Chapter

This is a sample chapter from Christian Crumlish’s book Product Management for UX People: From Designing to Thriving in a Product World. 2022, Rosenfeld Media.

Chapter 1: What Exactly Does a Product Manager Do?

If you’re not sure what product managers do, you’re not alone. Quite a few hiring managers—not to mention entire businesses—are also confused about this job title and what exactly it means. It doesn’t help that there are a wide variety of legitimate approaches to product management that tend to emphasize one or another of the constituent proficiencies at the expense of the others. As confusing as this may seem, there are multiple legitimate approaches to product management in practice today, because the work itself depends so heavily on context. That being said, every product manager has the same core responsibility: value.

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Illustrations