You want to be a Product Manager, but you don’t have a computer science background, didn’t study CS106A at Stanford, or haven’t done a General Assembly bootcamp. Neither did I, but I did go from college startup founder, to Marketing Manager, to Product Growth, and eventually Product Management at one of the most innovative product companies in Silicon Valley. Below I share some of my personal principles in my continuous effort to become a great PM.

Be the User:

A strong Product Manager embodies the voice of the end user(s).

One of the most important parts of the job is representing the user, whether internal or external, whether consumer or business. It is the PM’s responsibility to make sure the user’s voice is heard throughout conception, design and build.

When starting out, don’t hinder yourself by trying to build the exact product you think they need; instead, literally put yourself in the shoes of the user. If you are thinking about building a productivity tool, dedicate a month to focus on the following action items (4 activities x 1 week each):

• Test out the leading app/product in the market
• Ask a few friends what they use and test that tool
• Battle test the existing product you use in your everyday life
• Try an offline solution (ex. go oldschool and create a simple to-do list using Post-it Notes).

Gaining real-life experience as a user, having both successes and failures of the product to speak of, and identifying real problems that remain unsolved, put you in a unique position to guide the future of any product (roadmap).

Do the Research:

Ask questions, a lot of them, often.

I always try and frame my questions not around what do you want built, but rather, what is it that you are trying to accomplish. I ask this simply because I want to remove the notion that there are existing parameters of what it is that we can build, and instead focus solely on what the ideal product should be providing for.

You don’t need to be a product manager to ask these questions, you don’t even need to have a specific research tool. It is as simple as trying to improve an existing experience. Ask those around you what is:

• The most frustrating daily task they have
• Their most time-consuming activity
• The weekly experience that yields the lowest ROI for them

Ask them to talk you through the last time it happened, what else they have tried, why they continue to bother, and how they are currently dealing with it. These types of (non-leading) questions allow you to focus on what it is that they are trying to accomplish (the ideal state), rather than the symptoms of a problem they are facing.

A lot of these questions and how to ask them, I learnt from reading The Mom Test, whose premise is simple: We all want to find the truth of how to make our [product] succeed… the truth is our goal and questions are our tools.

Learn the Language

It is difficult, if not near impossible, to adapt and get along with new people if there is no way to communicate with one another.

Communication is at the center of any great Product Manager’s skill set. Whether speaking to the whole company, your end users, your team (engineers, designers), or your stakeholders — you have to cater your message in a language that will be understood. Don’t get locked into a single language, and don’t assume that your existing communication approach is the best way to reach everyone. You have to learn the different languages, the different ways and the different values of the person or group you’re trying to communicate with.

Study Up:

• Engineering speak
• Design speak
• PM acronyms and jargon
• Business speak

Caveat: Don’t make the mistake of adding these words in your vocabulary for the purpose of sounding intelligent, or even worse being guilty of using corporate speak. An ignorant PM favors communicating using imprecise words and confusing jargon. Use your new vocabulary with the goal of improving the quality of the communication you have with those around you.

Become a Domain Expert:

Nobody knows what they are talking about, until they do.

Know everything there is to know! Get your hands on everything about the industry, the ecosystem, the competition, similar tools, and existing in-market solutions. Plain and simple. Without this, you stand no chance.

Get in the weeds:

• Read customer reviews of existing products
• Get involved in message boards, reddit threads, Product Hunt.
• Read Medium articles from thought leaders in the industry
• Consume white papers from existing businesses in the space
• Follow industry veterans and disrupters on Twitter

Learn what is working, what isn’t working, what each solution has and what it’s lacking. If you understand what already exists, you will have a headstart on understanding what is missing, and more importantly where the opportunities lie. If you can bring in a piece of actionable feedback, a new solution to an existing problem, or an improvement to the existing experience, you’ve already provided value.

None of what I describe above requires any direct programming knowledge but by starting with these basics and staying focused, you’ve already won half the battle. Join me in continuing to defy the false belief that a great Product Manager requires a traditional technical background.

Coming soon: How to win the 2nd half of the battle. Spoiler alert: You still don’t need a technical background.