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Building products is often overwhelming. With an ever-growing to do list, engineers who need motivating, stakeholders who need managing and reports that need compiling. We’re here to help.
Designed to be used as points of reference throughout your day, the Department of Product’s digital guidebooks are bite-sized bundles of knowledge, tips and tidbits to help you make better product decisions.
Top articles
A selection of our most popular articles to get started
APIs explained for Product Managers
APIs are confusing. Make sense of REST, GET, endpoints, headers and payloads once and for all as we explain the 10 key things to know about APIs.Technology Skills for Product Managers
The most useful technical concepts to understand when working with engineers. From HTML to CSS and JS, we deep dive into what you need to knowSQL skills for product managers
SQL is a powerful skill to have as a product manager, allowing you to interact with a database to get the data you want. Here's a guide to the basics.Product Monetization Strategies
If a product is to succeed as a business it needs to prove it is a business. Finding a path to meaningful monetization can be difficult but is essential.Metrics that Matter to Product Managers
What are the metrics that matter to your product? We take a look at the most important metrics for popular product verticals so that you choose the right metrics for yours.5 useful diagrams for product managers
The ability to draw and produce clear diagrams are powerful skills for product people. Let's explore some of the most powerful ways to do it.Department of Product
2023 programs
Take your tech career to the next level with our intensive learning programs, led by world class product people.
Dates for the next Web Technologies program are confirmed and admissions are open for the next cohort. Product Mastery is currrently in session and new dates will be announced later this year.
Latest content
Recently published product content from the Department of Product
Articles
How to Structure your Day Using Energy Levels as a Product Manager
With product management often requiring a diverse bunch of different skill sets, it can be overwhelming to try to structure your day in a way that optimises each of the activities these skill sets are used for. What’s the best way to manage the tasks a PM might typically be required to do in a day? Let’s find out.
Product Development Processes You Might Not have Heard of
What are the alternatives to scrum and kanban you ask? Here’s 3 different product development processes that modern product teams are using that you may very well have never heard of.
Product Principles – Examples for Product Managers
Product principles are used by product teams to help guide decision making. They may initially feel like a nebulous corporate waste of time, but once you’ve invested some time in developing them, you’ll rarely wish you didn’t.
How to Conduct a Product Health Check
Product strategy isn’t simply about clear decision making; before you can even begin to make any decisions about the direction of your product, you need to spend some time in diagnostic mode where you try to build a big picture snapshot of the health of your product.
What Product Managers need to know about Product Marketing
Product management is concerned with deciding what to build, for who and why. Product marketing is concerned with figuring out the most effective ways of telling potential customers about what’s been built.
Weekly Briefings
Product Briefing – 24th November, 2022
A new calendar app with a twist, Amazon’s Alexa troubles, Notion adds AI writing capabilities and Shipt’s Director of Product shares a framework for hiring product people
Product Briefing – 17th November, 2022
A new voice assistant for building products, how Airtable makes roadmap updates at scale, a tool to help component governance, Disney+’s huge losses
Product Briefing – 10th November, 2022
A new customer service tool for product teams, Figma’s CEO talks acquisition, the layoffs continue, Zoom’s new set of products, how to structure your day using energy levels
Product Briefing – 3rd November, 2022
Slack’s new Threads feature, a new tool for the perfect memory, Uber impresses with earnings, Amazon’s principal product manager shares practical frameworks
Product Briefing – 27th October 2022
AI makes a comeback, Klarna’s new product, how to create your product principles, Microsoft earnings and Hinge’s plans for improving safety
Podcast episodes
Episode 9
Vishal Kapoor at Shipt
Vishal Kapoor is the Director of Product at Shipt where he leads two mission critical product groups: Order Bundling, and Shopper Earnings, which together manage billions of dollars of P&L annually. Prior to Shipt, Vishal was lead product manager at Lyft and spent 7 years in product at games maker Zynga. Vishal also has experience as a software engineer at Microsoft and Amazon. .
Episode 8
Vik Bharadwaj at Wayfair
Vik Bharadwaj is a Senior Product Manager for Wayfair Mobile apps leading engagement and retention initiatives along with optimizing for conversion. Prior to joining Wayfair, Vik was a senior product manager at Peapod Digital Labs, an Ahold Delhaize USA Company.
Episode 7
Mohana Cherukuri at EA Games
Mohana Cherukuri is a product manager at EA games working in the developer platform team, responsible for building tools that can be used inside EA games. Prior to EA Games, Mohana worked at Booking.com and Amazon, and has a background in software engineering.
Episode 6
Aishwarya Murali at Amazon
Aishwarya Murali is principal product manager at Amazon where she builds products to support the ecommerce seller experience. Prior to Amazon, Aishwarya worked as a Technical Product Manager at Expedia and spent time in management roles in Expedia and Dell.
Briefing
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@Deptofproduct is the best executed newsletter I’ve ever subscribed to. There’s always some tangible value to reading - i.e. gem of knowledge I can apply, story I can share or new tool to try
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A few of my favorite Product resources:
— Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj) June 5, 2018
1. Department of Product Briefing https://t.co/dEoqc2Bl9w
2. Product Decodedhttps://t.co/m4aaglcHkz …
3. Ben Thompson https://t.co/xrPvvLZYoK
4. Mind The Producthttps://t.co/1Jg2GYcm8c
5. Data Elixir https://t.co/7Ki7gIdzbQ
