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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KLVU0FcA3FDrXuBP_RR6zELq1l_wHz91ZvNlmBFA_eA/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0
To tell you the truth as a former hiring manager for PM teams, no certification replaces hands-on experience. I cannot think of a hiring manager today that would be swayed by any certification that is not backed by real-world work. Learn the basic skills of a product manager, speak with other people currently in the role at the company you want to work, and develop a plan for transitioning yourself. Your transition program may be unique to you. For instance, you could get a certification from the Product Institute on Strategic Product Management, but if you have not developed a product strategy even for a fictitious product or a competitor assessment or a pricing plan, then how can you jump into that role that directly affects revenue? Some companies will not allocate P&L responsibility to product managers, but all the companies I worked at did make you responsible for a portion of targeted net margin.
Thanks a lot for your advice! I guess transitioning within my company is the only way I could break into PM roles.
This one can be tough, particularly in the current market. I don’t disagree with the other response that experience trumps all. The Pragmatic certifications aren’t bad, but you can also find some much cheaper decent books (Haynes did a few including a huge encyclopedia-sized reference, and there are others, plus sites like productPlan and others, although many of the random YT videos and sites don’t really cover all topics, just the sexier bits).
What you could do is prepare for it now best you can. Step up and lead the team, from an architecture level, or depending on the team composition and dev practices, offer to be the teams SM, or better, P roduct Owner, or offer yourself to work more closely with the PO or Product Mgrs for the team. You’ll find all kinds of religious debates on what is or isn’t ’proper product mgmt’ (should PMs also act as their team’s POs, for example?) but each time I’ve built out a product team, whether from scratch or ‘just’ expanding, I’d *consider* strong POs, even if we were looking for more of a ‘pure’ product manager (e.g. doing a Product Plan, PRD, requirements doc in some form and then ‘handing over the fence). There’s a wide range of skills that PMs may or may not be good/better/not-so-good in, and that’s OK - not everyone is 100% focused on strategy and pricing, and having someone ABLE to dig in deeper with the technical teams implementing is also a worthwhile skill, especially where most of the rest of the Product Mgmt team may be MBA ‘quick start PMs.’.
Two things in parting:
1. I transitioned from Sr Engineer and Architect to Prod Mgmt and have now been Director level for the past decade or so. I still prefer to ‘get my hands dirty’ and am involved in at least one product line with engineering regularly. Has worked well for me, and the products I’ve been on, including when the interactions are more rare/only in critical cases to ‘get things right the first time’ or similar. Someone will come along to say how that’s doing Prod mgmt wrong, but it’s all good - they may well be trying to sell you on attending their course, or just want an argument. Works for me, and I have no desire to be a VP or CPO unless it’s my own company, so all good here.
2. If the teams you work on have both SM AND PO roles in place, I’d lean a lot harder to getting PO involvement over an SM. A lot of Product Managers could do SM, project or program management, but that’s an ‘extra skill’ and not the core which is essentially - what are we building, for whom, why, and others derived from there like the USP, positioning, etc. A ‘pure SM’ *may* develop a reasonable understanding of the product/project, but it’s not their key job, while a PO needs to go from sometimes vague high level requirements and ‘turn it into a shippable viable product,’ so more of the core skills translate over into different Product Mgmt roles.
Good luck!