From Amazon: "Product management is one of the most exhausting, exhilarating, stressful, and rewarding careers out there. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s for people who want to move mountains. It swallows some whole, but others derive endless invigoration and passion from the pace and the impact and the glory and the huge potential for failure as well as success. There’s no other job like it, and this is a book to help you make it your job. @rianvdm - would love to hear the story behind this.
Could you tell us about the writing process too? How did you go from idea, to writing the book, to here?!
@bentossell Hey Ben, thanks for asking!
When I lived in Cape Town I worked at a UX consultancy (Flow Interactive) that also did training. We already had a UX course, so I spent a few months creating a Product Management course as well. That turned out to be an excellent book MVP :) After running the course a few times and adjusting it based on participant feedback, I had a 400 "user tested" Keynote slides and I thought, "How hard could it be to turn this into a book!?"
Well, turns out, plenty hard :) But I worked with Smashing Magazine who was keen to publish it, and I had some great editors, including Francisco Inchauste (@iamfinch on Twitter) and Owen Gregor (@FullCreamMilkMan on Twitter).
Even though it was a long process, I think it accidentally (I didn't plan it this way when I created the course) turned into a pretty good way to write a book. I was able to test the concepts and the presentation thereof with a real audience, and I used that feedback to adapt and evolve the "MVP" into a book.
I loved this book because it's hands on, practical and most importantly "implentable", which is something I've struggled to find with this genre of book. I frequently open it up to recap on how to make things right – it's as hard as ever, but that's the job!
Makerpad
Making It Right
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