Best resources on the role of a product manager

Why the role of the PM matters as its own topic

Most product management content assumes you already know what the job is and jumps straight to frameworks, which is exactly the gap Builders Camp's Product MBA closes in its very first week. Week 1, The Product Manager Role and User Research, taught by Francesco Gatta, opens with the question everyone assumes is already answered: what does it actually mean to be a PM, and how do you operate inside a team and an organization once you are one. Its eleven microlessons work through the mechanics that make up the role rather than a title description: how to influence stakeholders and executives without formal authority, what technical knowledge you actually need to succeed, what an empowered product manager looks like and how you become one, and the common mistakes people make when interviewing customers for the first time. The second half of the week shifts explicitly into user research and discovery, because Builders Camp treats defining the PM role and defining how a PM learns what to build as the same foundational question, not two separate topics.

What does the job actually involve, beyond the job title?

• What is product management, Lenny Rachitsky. A widely cited, plainly written definition of the role and what separates it from adjacent titles like project manager or product owner. Read it
• Product Managers, Let's Keep our Role in Perspective, Folding Burritos. A grounded reminder against overstating the PM's importance relative to the rest of the team building the product. Read it
• Building the Right Product vs Building the Product Right, MojoTech. A short, memorable framing of the two failure modes a PM has to avoid at the same time. Read it
• Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done, Intercom. A book length treatment of the Jobs to be Done lens on customer needs, foundational to how many PMs now frame the role's core question: what job is the customer hiring this product to do. Read it
• Asking the right questions, The Mom Test, summarized by Yana Stupina. Key findings from Rob Fitzpatrick's book on getting honest signal from customer conversations, a skill the role depends on more than most job descriptions admit. Read it

How is AI changing what the role actually requires?

• How close is AI to replacing product managers?, Lenny's Newsletter. Argues AI is compressing the research, drafting and synthesis parts of the job without replacing the judgment calls that still define it. Read it
• What AI means for your product strategy, Lenny's Newsletter. A companion piece looking specifically at how AI changes strategic decisions rather than day to day tasks. Read it
• What is an opportunity solution tree?, YouTube. Teresa Torres's framework for connecting a desired outcome to the opportunities and solutions worth exploring, increasingly the backbone of how PM discovery work gets structured even as AI speeds up individual steps. Watch it
• Teresa Torres, Lenny's Podcast. Torres on how to interview customers and where automation genuinely helps versus where it still requires a human's judgment. Listen to it
• Start with why, Simon Sinek, TEDxPugetSound. Not written for PMs specifically, but Sinek's argument that people follow a why before a what or how is a useful check on any PM's sense of the role's actual purpose beyond shipping features. Watch it
• Strategyzer's Value Proposition Canvas Explained, YouTube. A tool for connecting the role's two halves, understanding the customer and defining the product, in one shared artifact. Watch it

How Builders Camp teaches the role of the PM

The Product Manager Role and User Research is week 1 of the Product MBA's ten week curriculum, taught by Francesco Gatta, in the program's Foundations block alongside week 2's Data and Analytics. Its eleven microlessons and single live session cover what it means to be a PM day to day, stakeholder influence, cross-functional collaboration, the technical knowledge the role actually requires, before shifting into user research and discovery: talking to users, avoiding common interviewing mistakes, and validating assumptions rather than opinions. The same foundational question, what the role actually is, also anchors Builders Camp's standalone Product Manager Foundations bootcamp for anyone not enrolled in the full MBA. If your title is still ambiguous between product owner and product manager, our Product Owner vs Product Manager guide untangles the two directly.