The Default Library
Majors / Minor

Product Management

Deciding what to build and why: finding real problems, choosing among ideas, measuring what changed and launching products people keep using.

A minor: a short route that sits beside a major and adds a skill many degrees need. It pairs well with Computer Science, Data Science, Business Administration, Marketing, Economics, Psychology, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering.

For: developers, designers, engineers and business students curious about the product role, founders building their first product, and anyone who has shipped something nobody used.

Shaped by the product practice taught by Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group), Teresa Torres's Continuous Discovery Habits, Harvard Business School's product-management electives and the Pragmatic Institute framework, alongside research on online experiments (Ron Kohavi).

9readings
2 hoursof reading
2stages
6 reads · 3 deep dives
Not started
Start the path
Stage 1

Part 1 · Finding what to build

4 readings · 51 min
  1. 01ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Product Management: The Job: The Person Who Asks Whether It Is Worth Building

    What a product manager does, how the job differs from project management, and where it came from.
  2. 02ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Product Discovery & Customer Research: Finding Out Before You Build

    Interviews, jobs to be done, assumptions and cheap tests before code.
  3. 03ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    UI & UX Design: Why Some Screens Just Work

    Designing interfaces people understand: research, layout, usability and accessibility.
  4. 04ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Marketing Research & Analytics: Asking, Testing and Not Fooling Yourself

    Surveys, segments and analytics: how marketers measure customers.
Stage 2

Part 2 · Building and shipping it

5 readings · 1.2 hours
  1. 05ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Product Strategy, Roadmaps & Prioritization: Choosing What Not to Build

    Vision, strategy, roadmaps and choosing what not to build.
  2. 06Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min

    Agile, Scrum & Kanban: Working in Small Loops, and Knowing When Not To

    How product teams work with engineering: sprints, boards and flow.
  3. 07Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min

    Product Metrics & Experimentation: Measuring What Changed, Not Just What Moved

    Funnels, retention, A/B tests and the metrics that mislead.
  4. 08ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Product Innovation & Go-to-Market: Why Good Products Still Fail

    Taking a new product from idea to market, and why most launches fail.
  5. 09Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min

    Launching & Growing Products: Launch Day Is Where the Real Test Begins

    Launch, product-market fit, growth and pricing.

Study it in depth, for free

These pieces give you the intuition. To learn the major properly, these are the courses and texts universities use, free to read or audit, and the standard textbooks if you want to own one. Links checked November 2026.

The whole major, free: No university publishes a free product-management degree, so the best free route is Y Combinator's Startup School for the whole arc from idea to launch, Teresa Torres's free opportunity solution tree material and Basecamp's free book Shape Up for discovery and planning, and Udacity's free A/B Testing course for measurement.

Free courses and texts

  1. The Four Big Risks and Product Roadmaps · Marty Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group · value, usability, feasibility and viability, and why feature-date roadmaps mislead; Parts 1 and 2
  2. Opportunity Solution Trees · Teresa Torres, Product Talk · from outcome to opportunities to tests; Part 1 discovery
  3. User Interviews 101 · Nielsen Norman Group · what interviews can and can't tell you; Part 1
  4. The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design · IDEO.org, free PDF · 57 research and prototyping methods; Part 1
  5. Shape Up · Ryan Singer, Basecamp, free online book · appetite, pitches and six-week cycles; Part 2 strategy and planning
  6. A/B Testing · Udacity, taught by Google staff · metrics, experiment design and analysis; Part 2 metrics
  7. Sample Size Calculator · Evan Miller · how many users a test needs; Part 2 metrics
  8. Startup School · Y Combinator · free lectures on product-market fit, launching and growth; Part 2

The standard textbooks

  • Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Marty Cagan, 2nd edition) · the field's standard introduction to the job; Part 1
  • Continuous Discovery Habits (Teresa Torres) · weekly customer contact and opportunity trees; Part 1
  • The Mom Test (Rob Fitzpatrick) · how to talk to customers without being lied to; Part 1
  • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy (Richard Rumelt) · diagnosis, guiding policy and coherent action; Part 2
  • Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments (Ron Kohavi, Diane Tang and Ya Xu) · the reference on A/B testing at scale; Part 2
  • The Cold Start Problem (Andrew Chen) · network effects and growth; Part 2
Next path →

Derecho

Para qué sirve el derecho, cómo razonan los abogados y cómo las grandes familias jurídicas del mundo responden de forma distinta a las mismas preguntas humanas.