Power Up Product Management: A Quick Start Guide

Power Up Product Management: A Quick Start Guide delivers a compact guide with expert guidance, tools, and exercises that empower new product managers to excel in their first weeks in their new position. Learn what it takes to build and sell outstanding products, how to define product value to impact product success, and why real-world product managers have failed or succeeded in gaining market traction.

The first in a series, this book helps anyone new to product go-to-market to quickly understand the overall product management function, including common product development methodologies, the criticality of "voice of customer," product stage definitions, and other PM essentials. The authors bring over 20 years of experience delivering software and hardware products globally for Fortune 500 companies and high-tech start-ups. Insights are delivered through real-life PM vignettes and to-the-point structured sections, making the quick start guide practical for both working PMs and new grads, or those considering a future PM or go-to-market career path. Executive leadership also benefits from the curated view into product management, which helps to develop a shared organizational-wide vision to guide improvements in people, process, and technology.

The book fills a gap in the market as an essential job companion with a fresh combination of knowledge, fun, and hands-on exercises to rapidly upskill or cross-skill in one of the most in-demand job areas today.

Allison J. Taylor is a Silicon Valley technology go-to-market strategist and entrepreneur who has brought over 20 enterprise software solutions and services to market across 35 countries, representing over $3 billion in revenue. An award-winning cybersecurity veteran, Allison consults international senior leadership and their diverse cross-generational teams on growth strategies as Founder and CEO of consulting firm Thought Marketing. She is also a co-founder of AI tech start-up Discerna.ai. Allison’s clients have included Honeywell, EMC/Dell and GE, in addition to many early and mid-stage cybersecurity, SaaS, and cloud start-ups worldwide. Her vast operating experience adds a dynamic practitioner view, drawing from cybersecurity product leadership positions at McAfee and Nokia, strategist roles at Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), and corporate communications leadership at legendary cybersecurity pioneer Check Point Software. She has co-authored two Routledge, Taylor & Francis books, with a third on the way for Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Cybersecurity, in close collaboration with a global cross-discipline team of experts in law, medicine, and engineering. Allison founded her first company at age 24 and is a former Middle East journalist and New York City trade press editor. She is often described as an “energy bomb,” passionate about the human condition and its relationship with technology and innovation. Allison speaks multiple languages and holds an M.S. from San Jose State University (technology diffusion among software developers) and a B.A. in Spanish and Journalism from the University of Richmond, Virginia in addition to many domain-specific certifications.

Christopher Naunheimer is an adjunct faculty member and a capstone project advisor at Northwestern University in the Masters of Product Design and Development Management program. He has more than 20 years of experience at multi-national Fortune 500 industrial companies with leadership roles in engineering, R&D, strategic marketing, new product ventures, and user-centered design. Over his career, Chris has been named inventor on 25 granted US utility patents and brings this innovation and continuous improvement mindset to teaching. Coupled with his user experience design education and industry experience, his mindset brings a broad cross-functional skill set to his roles at Northwestern University. Chris is passionate about design and has a deeply held belief that we can use design to develop insights and solutions that can change people, cultures, and the world. He holds an M.S. in Product Design and Development Management from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.