Free Product Manager Resources to Sharpen Your Tech Skills

It is possible to become a Product Manager even if you don’t have technical skills. Unless you’re applying for a specific PM position such as Technical Product Manager, the hard skills the role requires will depend on the product and the company. However, learning from different Product Manager resources to gain foundational technical knowledge will help you work and communicate better with your engineering team.

Apart from that, a good Product Manager should be dynamic and continuously learning. It’s advantageous to sharpen your technical skills even if you are not dealing with a highly technical product. 

What’s great is there are enough resources online for you to learn from for free. We’re compiling some Product Manager resources for you to enhance your technical competency.

Code Academy Courses

Code Academy is a website that offers a hands-on learning environment for those who want to learn how to code. It’s user and beginner-friendly so PMs who have no coding background can easily go through each lesson.

There are several technical lessons available – both free and paid. The free lessons will allow you to learn the basics. You don’t need to go through all of the lessons but you can pick out the most relevant ones. 

We’ve listed some of our recommended courses below:

• Introduction to DevOps
• Introduction to UI and UX Design
• Getting Started Off-Platform for Data Science
• Introduction to Cybersecurity
• Learn How to Code

Harvard University Courses

Harvard University has a platform called edX. On it, you will find several courses in different disciplines that are offered for free. To add to your technical knowledge, you might benefit from basic lessons in computer science or computer programming. We recommend checking out the following:

• CS50’s Computer Science for Business Professionals
• CS50: Introduction to Computer Science
• CS50’s Understanding Technology
• CS50’s Introduction to Programming with Scratch

Simon Sez IT YouTube Videos

The “IT” in Simon Sez IT stands for Information Technology which is the main subject matter of the channel. The videos the channel produces are easy-to-follow instruction videos that help learners understand different software. The videos will help you acquire various software skills as well.

There are more advanced lessons on their website that may require payment. But their YouTube videos are all free to watch. What we recommend as a Product Manager resource is the “Jira Tutorial for Beginners: Jira Project Management.”

Jira is a software application that’s commonly used to track issues and manage projects. The tutorial is going to be an overview and walk-through of the software. It’s also going to tackle basic Agile methodology and Agile terms you will find in Jira.

You can also check out their Jira playlist here which will teach you:

• How to Set Up Team-Managed Projects in Jira
• Creating a New SCRUM Board in Jira Tutorial
• How to Create a Kanban Board in Jira Tutorial
• Jira Tutorial: Introduction to Roadmaps in Jira
• User Management in Jira Tutorial

FreeCodeCamp Courses

FreeCodeCamp is a non-profit organization that aims to help people learn to code for free. The platform has thousands of videos, articles, and interactive coding lessons – all freely available to the public.

On the website, it is recommended that you go through each of the courses in order. It’s up to you which lesson you would like to tackle but to improve your tech skills as a Product Manager, we recommend reviewing:

• Data Visualization
• Information Security
• Back End Development and APIs

Silicone Valley Group Articles

The Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) was created to share senior-level experience and best practices for technology companies. The group is made up of industry veterans that have held executive-level positions in major companies in Silicone Valley. Each one has played a key role in developing leading products within their organizations.

Although the resource may not be exclusively technical content, the articles on the platform present interesting, updated, and relevant information and insight into the tech and Product Management world.

a16z Podcast

Understanding the things that are happening in tech and gaining as much insight as you can is still part of growing your technical knowledge. You can do this efficiently by listening to a podcast that purely discusses how innovation and technology change the way we all work, live, and play – the a16z Podcast.

Build with Blake Bartlett Podcast

There’s so much you can learn from brilliant minds that come from the world’s leading SaaS companies. This is what the Build podcast is all about. There are a lot of topics covered but we highly recommend checking out Season 5 which features interviews with product leaders from Calendly, SendGrid, Trello, Expensify, and Malwarebytes.

TechTarget: Cloud Computing

You don’t have to fully understand what cloud computing is. You just have to understand the basics and the concept enough to relate to your engineering team. Start with TechTarget’s Guide on Cloud Computing. The article has a video that makes the topic easier to follow.

SimpliLearn Cloud Computing Tutorial

If you want a bit more of a comprehensive lesson for beginners, you can try SimpliLearn’s Cloud Computing tutorial which is comprised of six lessons with video. The videos are around 10mins each so you should be able to have a better grasp of Cloud Computing in about an hour.

Books

Aside from the Product Manager resources already listed, there are also plenty of free e-books that you can learn from, believe it or not. We have listed a few that you can gain technical knowledge and understanding from:

• Principles of Product Design by Aarron Walter
• Prototyping for Product Managers
• The Definitive Guide to Integrating UX & Agile

There are also books that we have recommended in our post: “9 Books Every Product Manager Should Read in 2022.” They’re not free but you can refer to them in case you would like to learn more about product management as a whole.

Technical Terminology

You may also need to be familiar with terminologies like rest API, DDOS attack, creating a branch, and Big O notation. In our Product Manager interview course, we’ve listed down some of the commonly used tech terms in product management. You will find a technical glossary with its corresponding definitions and explanations within the course.

Read: Technical Glossary

Note: You might need to sign up and upgrade your account to access sections on lessons in the PM interview course.

Resources on Working with Engineers

As a Product Manager, you will need to work harmoniously with the engineering team to create great products for your organization. In most cases, Product Managers don’t end up having a good working relationship with the engineering lead which is why it’s important to include resources here that talk about this topic:

• Engaging with Engineering: Do’s and Don’ts for Product Managers by University of Washington Foster School of Business
• Software Engineer to Product Manager (from PM at Meta & Google) by PM Diego Granados

Bonus Templates

As a Product Manager, you may need a bit of help with the product management process and team collaboration so we’ve included templates you might find helpful when on the job:

• Notion Meeting Notes
• Trello Dev Board
• Bug Tracker
• Product Hunt

Conclusion

There are so many resources out there that you can learn from to pick up a new tech skill or sharpen the tech skills you already have. We’ve listed some of the best resources for you to refer to.

For Product Managers who would want to go through the lessons to improve their relationship with their Engineering Manager, please remember that while the above list may give you foundational knowledge about tech topics and concepts, you ultimately have to go back to your engineers because they could be your ultimate resource. Just like how you would spend time with users, allotting time to spend with your engineering team is an ongoing responsibility.

As for aspiring Product Managers and those who want to break into product management, you can surely benefit from the lessons that you will learn from the Product Manager resources that we have provided, especially if you would like to be a Technical Product Manager (TPM). You might have to go beyond the resources listed here if you want more in-depth education but they are good as a start. 

Lastly, if you’re preparing for an upcoming PM interview, PMExercises has a good number of resources that can help you prepare.

PMExercises Resources

At PMExercises, we’ve put together a Product Manager Interview Course along with 2500+ Product Manager Interview Questions with sample answers from our PM community. 

After you sign up and become part of the community, you can contribute questions and answers in the database as well, and have other members give you feedback.

With our prep course and database of questions, we also have a Practice feature where you can find other product managers who are also prepping for their interviews to practice with.

We understand how challenging it may be to prepare for a PM job interview so these resources that we consistently update will hopefully aid you in your journey to landing your dream Product Manager job.