[Project Aristos] PM Coaching

Topics we will cover in this program:

Behavioral
Design
Data
Case studies
- Guesstimates
- GTM
- Strategy
- Marketing
Strategy
Prioritisation/Roadmapping
Tech
General Gyaan

/start

Session 1 (Kick Off + Get started with Design and Behavioral) (3 weeks study plan)

Date: Thursday 12th December

Prepare a list of companies you want to apply to (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3) (3 days)
- At least 1 from each
- Prepare questions from glassdoor
- Understand the process in and out
- Look for specific tips
- Research the company well
Have a ready made list of tips for Interviews so that you don’t make the mistakes people have made already (2 days)
Watch product school videos from PMs of (- 3 hours)
- Facebook
- Linkedin
- Google APM
Prepare NSTAR for behavioral questions. Have at least 20 stories ready across all +ve/-ve traits (1 day)
- Leadership/Influence/ownership
- Teamwork
- Success
- Challenges
- Things you regret
Artiom Dashinsky Product Design weekly exercises (3 hours)
- First 2 Product exercises
Learn 2 Frameworks (1 hour)
- Circles method
- Framework given in Crack the PM Interview
Complete Crack the PM Interview (1 week)
Go through these links (2 weeks)

Session 2 (Become better with Design and Behavioral) (3 weeks study plan)

Date: Thursday 19th December

Revise Design section of Crack the PM Interview (1 day)
Revise Behavioral section of Crack the PM Interview (1 day)
Read Talking to Humans (1 day)
Read The Mom Test (1 day)
Start reading posts from How To Get Into Product Management (And Thrive) (1 week)
More Artiom Dashinsky Product Design weekly exercises (1 day)
- Pick and do any 8 Product exercises
Redesign 3 company products (1.5 hours)
- Linkedin’s Job Search
- Facebook’s Messenger
- Spotify’s Discover section
Brainstorm and give crazy ideas on how you would reimagine the (1.5 hours)
- Toothbrush
- Sleeping pillow
- ATM
Read and memorise the gist of the 20 stories you created for NSTAR (1 hour)
- Think of more +ve and -ve traits and write more stories about them (3 hours)
Learn how to do think about products better (3 hours)
- Read this Product Critique post
- Critique 3 apps which are on your phone
Read some posts on how people have redesigned popular products (1 day)
Learn how to give feedback to Designers (2 hours)
- Peek Inside a Facebook Design Critique
- Four Things Working at Facebook Has Taught Me About Design Critique
More design Reads (2 days)
Revise how to solve the 4 type of design interview Problems (1 day)
- Generic product (Design X for Y)
- Go crazy
- Generic company
- Specific company
Things which can’t be covered in a week but you need to do to understand Design better (Complete at your own space)
- Coursera Course on HCD
- Read
  - Design of Everyday things (Honest confession: I have not completed the book)
  - Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days - Jake Knapp
  - Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - Steve Krug
  - Designing for Emotion - Aarron Walter
Revise from the RANDOM DOC (This is a doc where I shared my own frameworks and showed how to solve few design problems)

Session 3 (Get started with Data and Case Studies) (2 weeks study plan)

Date: Friday 27th December

Read all the Case Study Frameworks (2 days)
- Guesstimates
- GTM
- Strategy
- Marketing
- Do at least 5 questions in each of the sections above
Complete Introduction to Structured Query Language (SQL) Coursera course (1 week)
Read Lean Analytics (1 week)
Read post on how to do RCA/ numbers went down questions

Session 4 (Storytelling, Throwback to Behavioral) (4 weeks break after this)

Date: Sunday 5th January

Started the session with 2 hours of practice with behavioral questions
- Refer to this doc and go through all the answers again
Practice storytelling
- Practice your behavioral interview answers
  - Practice in front of the mirror
  - Practice with your study group
- Record and play back the audio to check flow
- Incorporate all the feedback given during the session in your behavioral answers

Session 5 (Become better with Data and Case Studies) (3 weeks study plan)

Date: Tuesday 5th February

Practice how to solve the following types of data interview problems (1 week)
- RCA questions from RANDOM DOC
- Intro to Analytics
- Company specific feature dev data questions (Think of it as you creating the first 2 pages of this spec) (Also check the Swiggy Restaurant app case study we did)
- Company’s most important metrics questions (Refer to discussions around North Star and top 5 metrics for Amazon Ecommerce PM)
- Generic company feature question (You are the PM of X. How will you measure success of Y features)
- Dashboard creation (What would the dashboard of the PM of Facebook Newsfeed look like)
- Experimentation questions (How would you roll out feature X, How would you run an A/B test)
Create dashboards for all the different type of businesses mentioned in Lean Analytics book (3 days)
- Example. In e-commerce you can assume that you are the PM for Check Out flow for Amazon
Items shared in our Aristos whatsapp group (1 week)
- Shaadi.com case study
- Character limit of tweets discussion. Think how you would tackle the same problem
- Start reading the bookmarks on Data Analytics and Growth
Understand in depth (4 days)
- Metrics
- North Star
- Top level metrics
- Conversions
- Funnels
- Cohort analysis
- RFM analysis
- Histograms
- Pirate Metrics (AARRR)
- Product funnels
- User funnels
- A/B testing
- ABCs of A/B test (Part 1),(Part 2)
Read up on (1 week)
- CAC
- LTV
- ARPU
- Correlation vs Causation
- Unit economics
- Churn
- NPS
- CSAT
Advanced Topics (1 month, Do at your own pace)
Extra reading material (1 month, Do at your own pace)

Session 6 (Practice session on Data and Case Studies) (3 weeks study plan)

Date: Thursday 5th March

Practice session
- You’re the PM for Zomato Gold. Your CEO comes up with an idea to offer zomato gold for food deliveries as well. Figure out whether to do it or not?
  - Things to consider here
  - North star
  - User
  - Product funnel
  - Conversions
  - Histograms
  - Cohorts
  - RFM analysis
  - Pirate metrics
  - Business equation (what levers impact the business)
  - Flywheel
  - Correlation with high-level metrics (top down and bottoms up)
  - A/B testing
  - Metrics like: CAC, LTV, ARPU, Unit economics, churn
- You’re the PM of Uber and have a hypothesis that making the ‘Confirm Booking’ button bigger will lead to more conversions. How will you plan an experiment for this?
  - North star
  - Absolute orders
  - Conversions
  - Demand side and supply side
  - Total supply hours
  - Surge
  - Supply utilization
  - Service areas
  - Service types
  - Entire product funnel
  - Conversion of service types
Complete study material of previous sessions if not done already (1 month, Do at your own pace)
Correlation vs Causation discussion
Factors to consider whether to roll-out a new feature/product directly, in phases or via a A/B test
So you want to understand LTV and Churn?
Random doc notes

Session 7 (Get started with Roadmaps, Prioritisation, Planning, Stakeholder management & General Gyaan) (3 weeks study plan)

Date: Thursday 19th March

OKRs
- Measure What Matters - John Doerr
Creating a roadmap
Prioritisation
Top down vs Bottoms up Planning
- Refer to discussions we had
Planning improvement on user funnel vs product funnel
- Refer to discussions we had
How to collect insights
Inputs to a planning process
- Qualitative vs Quantitative
- BI and Research docs
Output documents
- Docs and sheets you need to maintain as part of your planning process
- Refer to discussions we had
How to think about timelines
- Refer to discussions we had
Why vs What vs How
Stakeholder management
Gap analysis
Random doc notes
New PM reading list (2 months, Do at your own pace) Summaries here

Session 8 (Becoming better with Roadmaps, Prioritisation, Planning, Stakeholder management, Strategy & General Gyaan) (3 weeks study plan)

Date: Monday 23rd March

Random doc notes
Read everything from So you want to learn Strategy?
General gyaan on Strategy
Discussion on how we used to created a roadmap and prioritise features at Directi
Discussion on how a hypothetical pay later company would create their OKRs, Roadmap, and prioritise their features
More reading material

Session 9 (Data Recap and Tech)

Date: Tuesday 24th March

Random doc notes
What kind of questions are asked in a Tech round of the PM interview process
Technical Skills for Non-Technical Product Managers
Technical Study Guide for PM Interviews
5 Things Every Product Manager Should Know About Software Development
Brief overview of
- Client Server model
- Monolith vs Micro services
- REST vs SOAP
- APIs
- Caching
- Database design
- How to think system design
- Web vs Apps
Discussion around what happens behind the scenes when you
- load the Estimate screen of Uber
- open cart page of amazon
- like a tweet on Twitter
Study material
- List of around 500 bookmarks on Tech shared on Aristos Whatsapp group
- Gaurav Sen’s system design videos
- Tushar Roy’s Coding made Simple
Complete Online courses I recommend for aspiring PMs
Day to Day PM’ing Bookmarks shared on Aristos Whatsapp group
General Gyan on Career

Practice

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