Originally posted on Veamly

If you are a non-technical person who wants to break into product management, then you’re definitely in the right place. We are starting a series of blogs where we go through all the essential tech skills PMs need to have in order. So here is our first checklist of analytical and decision-making skills!

Be able to collect and analyze data

Analyzing data helps you understand how and why your metrics are changing. After building, you measure your growth through metrics to learn and adapt based on what’s working and what’s not. It’s important to know how the different constituents surrounding your product are reacting to your product.

For example, if retention is dropping then you’re probably doing something wrong with your problem definition. Or it could be a bug in your system. The only way for you to know the real cause is to collect as much data as you need, to analyze it, and draw the right conclusions from it.

Free course: Google analytics academy

A/B testing

Why: helps you experiment with different versions to see what works best with your audience. Remember, it’s all about pinning down THE formula of features and practices that optimize your outcome. For your product to evolve and be a better fit to your customers, you need to first figure out what they’re looking for. You can do research, guess, assume, but experiments are your fastest way there.

Free course: Udacity course of “A/B testing by Google”

Spreadsheets:

Back to data analysis, mastering spreadsheets is one of the must-have skills every PM needs. You need to sort, filter, group, graph, visualize, and analyze data. Spreadsheets are THE go-to interpretation tool for that.

Free course: Udemy course on Google spreadsheet Basics

Prototyping:

It’s about reducing business risks. Meaning that you build mini products to test with and once you hit your perfect prototype, you start developing the actual product that will be delivered to your customers. This step minimizes your costs, labor, and gets your product going faster than focusing on building and then starting from scratch again after every miss.

Free course: Udacity course on “Rapid prototyping by Google”

Then comes “how to talk to your engineers”. Stay tuned for our next blog for the next step!