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Daniel Coulter

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May 26, 2022 - JavaScript Functions cont.

More fun in the world of JavaScript Functions.

This article provided some general information on a variety of technical concepts:

APIs - How we get and give information to other systems (and sometimes our own system)

More information:

https://blogs.mulesoft.com/learn-apis/api-led-connectivity/what-are-apis-how-do-apis-work/⁠

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Client vs Server side - whether the activity is happening on the client’s computer/browser or with our programming

More information:

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/serverless/glossary/client-side-vs-server-side/⁠

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Conditional Statements - briefly discusses if/else statements

More information:

https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/c/contstat.htm⁠

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Databases - how we store and access data

More information:

https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/database⁠

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Computer languages - how your developers write the code

More information:

https://www.itonlinelearning.com/blog/how-do-html-css-and-javascript-work-together/⁠

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SQL - how we ask for specific data from another system/database. Also good for data analysis.

More information:

http://www.sqlcourse.com/intro.html⁠

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6 Technical Concepts For The Non-Technical Product Manager APIs to Zipping — Knowing the basics can go a long way medium.com⁠

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May 25, 2022 - JavaScript Functions

May 24, 2022 - JavaScript Continued

Continued learning about JavaScript today. Spent time learning about Strings and Conditional Variables.

May 23, 2022 - JavaScript Continued

Built a small program today to do something like MadLibs and have it report out on the screen. Had some fun with the kids looking at all the ways to make it respond.

May 22, 2022 - Article

I liked this article. Gave a good understanding of the myriad of ways that a Product Management team can run into difficulties.

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7 Reasons Why Product Management Fails A deep dive into the reasons why the PM function is unintentionally set up for failure by businesses and how they can avoid it. rkakodker.medium.com⁠

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May 20, 2022 - JavaScript Continued

Since I work with APIs every day, I thought this would be a good one. It was a quick overview, but seemed like it was written specifically to market their book.

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APIs can make or break your digital product. Here’s what a product manager should know. Definitions of API out there are bonkers. Learn and master API Basics while navigating through the technicalities as a novice. bootcamp.uxdesign.cc⁠

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May 19, 2022 - JavaScript

Spent some time working through JavaScript training on TeamTreehouse.

This was an interesting article, not about other frameworks but really how to think about how we consider prioritization. Here are the nuggets:

Align priorities with strategy, not just goals/objectives

What stage is the product in?

Use principles to help set the priority

Balance your bets (do big and small stuff)

What is the cost?

Limit your prioritization effort

Route some capacity to maintenance

Don’t limit yourself to a framework

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How to prioritise and make better product decisions NOT another post about fancy frameworks or focusing on outcomes over outputs. uxdesign.cc⁠

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May 18, 2022 - Communication & Podcasts

Communication

Today’s Medium article was about communication. This is always a good reminder. As my parents used to remind me... “God gave you two ears and one mouth. So, you should listen twice as much as you speak.” There are some good general reminders that we need to listen...actually listen to the needs. Don’t just try to guess what the stakeholder needs. Listen to their needs.

We also get caught in the quick reply mindset. I get caught in this myself, so this was a good reminder for me. I get a lot of emails and communications. I feel mentally pressured to act based on notifications. I like to have only items in my inbox that still require work. So those things together drive me to respond quickly. I need to stop, and consider the responses.

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Loading bootcamp.uxdesign.cc⁠

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Podcasts

tl;dr - follow these podcasts

This is Product Management -

http://tipm.feedbackloop.com/⁠

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The Product Experience -

https://www.mindtheproduct.com/category/the-product-experience/⁠

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The Product Podcast -

https://www.productschool.com/⁠

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UX Podcast -

https://uxpodcast.com/⁠

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Those were the podcasts that she suggested. I would recommend the following two additional podcasts:

Agile Uprising Podcast -

http://www.agileuprising.com/⁠

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Product Thinking -

http://dearmelissa.com/⁠

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Melissa Perri is a great Product thinker and writer of a great Product Management book, Escaping the Build Trap.

May 17, 2022 - TeamTreehouse Product Management

Today’s article is about Product Requirements Documents. It was a fairly high level document. Good list of items to cover if you’ve never written a PRD before, but it is not a very deep article.

The short version, keep it short and to the point. Don’t write with platitudes, give specifics.

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How to Write a Product Requirements Document (PRD) A guide to writing excellent PRDs medium.com⁠

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I also had the opportunity to complete the TeamTreehouse Product Management track. Overall it was a good introduction, but it should be a baseline for Associate Product Managers, not as a tool that would help us get to where Product Managers or Sr. Product Managers would be spending their time.

May 16, 2022 - WCAG

Today’s Medium article is about Product Leadership. This is a good one. Good reminder of how to move into leadership positions and why. If you are only doing it for a title or for more comp, those are the wrong reasons. You should do those things because you like to grow Product people or you like working on complex problems. Those are the sort of things the new role would require of you anyway. So, if you are only interested for the title or comp, you really aren’t interested.

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Loading productcoalition.com⁠

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Also continuing some training on TeamTreehouse on WCAG requirements and web accessibility. Was a good reminder to check out some of the cool features our phones have built into them regarding accessibility.

May 14, 2022 - Personal growth

Today I read this from Medium. I will have to check it a couple of the links for the tools mentioned. Personally, bring a long time book lover, I wonder how much someone could get from reading and working through the Product School book instead of spending the money on the course. Of course, you doing get a certificate of completion, but is it worth it?

This makes me think of the movie Good Will Hunting....

Will: You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.

Anyone that knows me knows how much I love the library.

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Product School Review, Advice, and Alternatives - Product Manager Certificate …and personal thoughts medium.com⁠

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Today I am rereading a great book called

The Intentional Fathe⁠

r. It is all about how to raise our children with intention. Lots of introspection today.

Always be learning.

May 13, 2022 - More data analysis

This was a good reminder of what a one-pager should look like. For anyone looking to get into Product, this is a great thing to learn how to create. When I start on a new product or at a new company, I start by pulling my ideas into a one-pager.

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Loading zedaio.medium.com⁠

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I am continuing my learning journey with TeamTreehouse today and hopefully will wrap up the data analysis course. It is a bit of an elementary class so far, but there is always something you can get out of it. In my case, I’ve always used Excel for data analysis. The course uses Google Sheets, so, I’ve been able to learn some of the tips and tricks of dealing with Google Sheets. Always be learning.

May 12, 2022 - Data analysis

Continuing on the Product Management Basics class at TeamTreeHouse today. The class of the day is Spreadsheet basics. I am already familiar with Spreadsheets (been using them for many years), but in training like this there are always new things that have changed since I started, and there are opportunities to learn. I encourage anyone that knows a subject to stick with it and pick out that one extra nugget. Sometimes it is a very simple thing that can change your world.

Now for today’s Medium article...

Loading levelup.gitconnected.com⁠

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Essentially the 5 characteristics are:

Partnership

Communication

Curiosity

Advocate for changing team needs

Product vision

May 11, 2022 - Data analysis & Figma

Doing some TeamTreehouse learning on Data analysis.

I finished up my company’s training on Figma too. This will give me access to switch over from Adobe XD to Figma, which is a huge win. I’ve used Figma before, so this is a bit of a refresher. I had forgotten how great Figma is. I hadn’t really used it since my days at LPL back in 2000, so the changes that they’ve implemented are wonderful. They’ve taken some of the best things from other tools and incorporated it into Figma. Way to go!

The title of the article here got me interested:

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A Complete Guide to Mastering Jira for Aspiring & Practising Product Managers⁠

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Some helpful links from the article:

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Slides from the session⁠

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May 10, 2022 - Figma stuff

Today I’ve taken several small courses on Figma via LinkedIn Learning. We are working to switch from Sketch to Figma, this will give me access to Figma via my company’s license.

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Figma for UX Design (2021) Online Class | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com Learn how to get up to speed quickly with Figma for UX design. This quick, project-based introduction helps design and UX professionals adapt quickly to a new toolset. www.linkedin.com⁠

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May 9, 2022 - Couple articles on PM stuff

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Loading bootcamp.uxdesign.cc⁠

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Interesting heuristic from this article is that technical debt takes 4x more effort to pay down than it saves in the first place.

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Product Roadmap Best Practice — 6 things to avoid! Best practices for product roadmaps is one of our favorite topics here at ProdPad. (This comes as a surprise to no one. We’ve built a… medium.com⁠

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This was a good article with a few takeaways, but I could summarize by saying “keep a balanced roadmap.” Don’t focus too much on a customer, too much data from A/B testing, don’t promise dates, make it available and visible.

May 6, 2022 - Some training

Today happens to be my 16th wedding anniversary. I am blessed to be married to my best friend.

I had an opportunity to do several small classes on Treehouse today. I finished up some of the Design classes and moved on to some of the User Research content. The Product Manager track is pretty good for getting an overall understanding of what the role should be and how we should be considering the broad goals of the Product, but it lacks a lot of the tactical content (or it was just covered so fast and that is where we spend a lot of time).

This reminds me of the Pragmatic Marketing approach, where the high value content is where we want to be (and the Treehouse course teaches), but most of our time is spent fighting fires and with the tactical work that doesn’t drive as much value.

I started some Javascript training today. It is interesting so far, and it is where my development team suggested I start.

May 5, 2022 - Product Frameworks

Today I finished the Coda training and am continuing on the Product Manager path here at Treehouse. The next class is on UX, which fortunately for me I’ve got several years of experience in.

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Read this article today. Presents the VICTORY framework:

-Vision

-Impact

-Confidence

-Time

-Onboard

-Risk

-You

VICTORY score = (V*I*C+O+Y)/(T*R)

May 4, 2022 - PM routines

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Ask Gib: “What specifics in a daily routine separate a good Product Manager from a great Product… Short answer: Begin your day with intent, minimize meetings, spend time with customers, manage your own career, balance time between… gibsonbiddle.medium.com⁠

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Article had some good points. I thought his suggestion on types of meetings and the cadence for those meetings made good sense.

May 4, 2022 - Getting Started

May the 4th be with you! I am currently taking a course from Treehouse on

coding with Coda⁠

. I just finished a course on Scrum Essentials.

The Scrum Essentials was good, and a very high level introduction for anyone who has never experienced Scrum before, however it was a very basic course for those of us who interact with Scrum every day. I wish that Treehouse had a good way to test out of a class and still get the credit.

Here’s a little more about the course if you are curious.

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My Learning BlogMy Learning Blog

May 26, 2022 - JavaScript Functions cont.

May 25, 2022 - JavaScript Functions

May 24, 2022 - JavaScript Continued

May 23, 2022 - JavaScript Continued

May 22, 2022 - Article

May 20, 2022 - JavaScript Continued

May 19, 2022 - JavaScript

May 18, 2022 - Communication & Podcasts

Communication

Podcasts

May 17, 2022 - TeamTreehouse Product Management

May 16, 2022 - WCAG

May 14, 2022 - Personal growth

May 13, 2022 - More data analysis

May 12, 2022 - Data analysis

May 11, 2022 - Data analysis & Figma

May 10, 2022 - Figma stuff

May 9, 2022 - Couple articles on PM stuff

May 6, 2022 - Some training

May 5, 2022 - Product Frameworks

May 4, 2022 - PM routines

May 4, 2022 - Getting Started

My Learning Blog
My Learning Blog