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What is a JavaScript framework?

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A JavaScript framework is a collection of JavaScript code libraries that provide a web developer with pre-written code for routine programming tasks. Frameworks are structures with a particular context and help you create web applications within that context. 

It is completely possible to build strong web applications without JavaScript frameworks, but frameworks provide a template that handles common programming patterns. Each time you have to build an application, you don’t need to write code for every single feature from scratch. Instead, you can build upon an existing feature set. 

JavaScript frameworks, like most other frameworks, provide some rules and guidelines. Using these rules and guidelines, any developer can make complex applications faster and more efficiently than if they decided to build from scratch. The rules and guidelines help shape and organize your website or web application too!

For example, think about a potter’s wheel where you can build pots. The potter’s wheel is your framework; it has certain consistencies that you have to work with. The wheel rotates, and you can use that rotation to build pots of different shapes and sizes.

You can build pots, plates, cups, bowls, or even cylindrical sculptures. But you can’t build a house with it; you need to find a different framework for that. 

Framework vs. Library 

A common topic of discussion in the software community is the difference between a framework and a library. In truth, experts have suggested that the line between them can be blurry, but it is useful to make the distinction.

While a JS framework is a full toolset that helps shape and organize your website or application, a JS library, on the other hand, is a collection of pre-written code snippets that are less about shaping your application and more about providing a use-as-needed library of features. 

Model View Controller (MVC) 

Modern JavaScript frameworks use a software design pattern called Model–View–Controller. It is commonly used for developing user interfaces that divide related programming logic into three interconnected elements.

The model is the central web component of the pattern as it is the application’s dynamic data structure. It manages the data of the application.

The view consists of all the code that has to do with representing the application’s data — the code for the user interface.

The controller is the interpreter. It accepts inputs and converts them into commands for the model or view.

Frameworks are built around the MVC design pattern to provide structure and adaptability in software development. 

JavaScript is one of the most popular and widely used programming languages globally and has more frameworks than any other language. Since JavaScript is used for both client-side and server-side code, there are many frameworks to work with. Some of the most popular frameworks include: 

Front-End Frameworks

React

React.js is an efficient and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces created by Facebook. Technically, React is a JS library, but it is often discussed as a web framework and is compared to any other open source JavaScript framework.

React makes it easy to create interactive user interfaces because it has predictable JavaScript code that is easy to debug. Furthermore, it provides a REACT component system where blocks of JavaScript code can be written once and reused repeatedly in different parts of the application or even other applications. 

Angular

AngularJS is a popular enterprise-level JavaScript framework used for developing large and complex business applications. It is an open-source web framework created by Google and supported by both Google and Microsoft. 

Vue 

Vue.js is a progressive framework for building user interfaces. It is an up-and-coming framework that helps developers in integrating with other libraries and existing projects. It has an ecosystem of libraries that allow developers to create complex and solid single-page applications. 

Back-End Frameworks

Express 

Express.js is a flexible, minimalistic, lightweight, and well-supported framework for Node.js applications. It is likely the most popular framework for server-side Node.js applications. Express provides a wide range of HTTP utilities, as well as high-performance speed. It is great for developing a simple, single-page application that can handle multiple requests at the same time. 

Next.js

Next.js is a minimalistic framework that allows a a JavaScript developer to create a server-side rendering and static web applications using React.js. It is one of the newest and hottest frameworks that takes pride in its ease of use. Many of the problems developers experience while building applications using React.js are solved using Next.js. It has many important features included “out of the box,” and makes development a JavaScript breeze. 

In the current job market, the most popular JavaScript framework/library is React.js. Since JavaScript has so many frameworks, it can sometimes be hard to decide which one to start learning. You could start with any framework, but if your goal is to get a job, you will have better odds if you learn React first. The same can be said for Express.js as a back-end framework as it is the most widely used and sought-after framework. 

JavaScript frameworks are more adaptable for designing web applications and make working with JavaScript easier and smoother. This is why they are so popular among developers. A variety of frameworks exist because they can be applied to solve different problems. When choosing a framework, carefully consider your project requirements before deciding to implement any particular JavaScript framework. In addition to all the unique technical features of JavaScript frameworks, each framework comes with its own learning curve, community engagement/support, documentation, and compatibility. 

A Product Management Career Map Developed by GA’s Product Management Standards Board

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Businesses have shifted from traditional ways of operating to truly becoming customer-centric digital organizations — and the global pandemic has accelerated this inevitable shift. Product managers, who sit at the nexus of customer needs, business strategy, and technology, play a critical part in building their companies’ digital fluency so organizations can evolve and transform their products to meet market and customer demands. 

That said, product management is often ill-defined as a function, especially in traditional companies, and business leaders and managers have a responsibility to precisely understand product management skills and careers to help these nascent leaders succeed and unlock their full potential. 

By developing and integrating product managers as strategic thinkers who help evolve organizations into being customer-centric, leaders and managers can tap into many benefits:

  1. Improved leadership pipeline and succession planning: Product managers are responsible for many things, but skills development strategies to level-up their subject matter expertise into leadership roles are not often clear. By connecting product management skills to a long-term and articulated career path, you can improve your leadership pipeline and increase career satisfaction for your product managers.
  2. Clear hiring objectives: Evaluating candidates against a documented set of skills can decrease bias and help recruiters make vital distinctions between hiring project managers, product managers, and product owners. 
  3. Increased product management talent pipeline: Creating consistency around what early-career professionals understand a product manager to be and what they must learn creates access to product management careers for people who don’t already have product managers in their networks.

We formed the Product Management Standards Board with a wide-ranging set of product management leaders across the consumer goods, technology, finance, and education sectors. We’ll channel our collective experience into increasing clarity of and access to product management skills and careers so that the next generation of product management talent can maximize their impact in organizations and the world.

We’ve crafted a career framework as a valuable tool for:

  • Product leaders who want to build capable, well-balanced teams.
  • Aspiring product managers who want to understand what skills they need to enter the field and help lead organizations.
  • Mid-career professionals who wish to understand their career options.
  • HR leaders who want to build transparent, consistent career pathways.

What Defines an Excellent Product Manager?

We drafted a career map that captures our collective thinking about what makes a product manager and the career paths and associated skills required for an employee to one day become a product leader.

Let’s break down each section of the framework and see how they’re used to guide
career progression. 

Associate Product Manager 

To begin a career in product management, individuals often move into associate product management roles from within or outside an organization with some existing understanding of the business, product, and/or customer base. While we firmly believe anyone can become a product manager starting at the associate level, we commonly see analysts, software engineers, designers, project managers, or product marketers moving into this role. In this stage of career development, product managers learn to use data to make decisions, influence without authority, and understand the balancing act of prioritization.

Product Manager

Product managers learn a mix of skills based on their particular product, area of responsibility, and expertise. Product managers in charge of a new product or feature may heavily focus on research and development. In contrast, product managers responsible for improving the quality and efficacy of an existing product or feature may focus more on data analysis to understand what drives an improved experience.

Squad leadership is critical to ensuring all people understand the goal they are working towards and what success will look like. Product managers at a large organization have the opportunity to either specialize in a single domain or can work with their managers to rotate ownership over product areas to develop a breadth of experience and skills.

Product managers at a startup will likely get to experience all of these skills in rapid rotation as their teams iterate quickly to identify product-market-fit and the right set of features for their product.

Senior Product Manager

The senior product manager level is where product managers start differentiating between becoming “craftmasters” in the individual contributor path or people managers on the leadership path. While craftmasters still need to provide inspiring team leadership to those working on the product, they often become particularly versed in a product domain, like product growth and analytics.

In contrast, a people manager in this role largely focuses on team management skills. Either way, this role is a critical step in someone’s career as it allows them an opportunity to practice developing and sharing a vision for a product with their team and working with more moving parts to guide people towards that vision. Understanding and prioritizing these moving parts become a key skill to develop at this level.

Additionally, the responsibilities to make decisions related to product growth also increase here. This level is a product manager’s opportunity to demonstrate an understanding of how business, market, and product intersect to inform the direction of the product and distinctly articulate how they expect that product to impact the company’s financials.

Director of Product

At this career point, directors of product are making a critical transition from manager to leader. They have to bring the threads of the product strategy and the product roadmap together and take ownership and responsibility for their decisions and impact. The Director of Product also starts to gain ownership of the cost side of their decisions – at some companies, this can extend as far as P&L ownership for project and product costs. They move into managing a portfolio of products and connecting the dots between how they work collectively for users and guide teams to work through complex problems to develop goals on a longer, future-driven timeline. 

VP or Head of Product 

Once an individual reaches this leadership level, they have mastered the key functional skills of product. They are now the pivotal connection point between the rest of the company’s leadership plans and the product team. They have to get beyond “product speak” and help connect the dots between technology, customers, and business goals with other leaders and employees across the business. There is a fair amount of time spent aligning resources and plans with other leaders to drive the strategy forward. As product leaders, they are also driving innovative thinking and are responsible for either the entirety of the product or a significant portfolio in terms of the company’s financials. 

A Few Notes

We’ve had many rich discussions while building out the career map and teased out some nuances listed below that may come to mind as you work your way through this framework.

What about a product owner?

While product owners play a critical function, we do not see this as being a distinct job title for someone. If you’re curious about the distinction and who might play a product ownership function in your teams, read Product Dave on Medium

What about the difference between startups and large organizations and everything in-between?

Product leaders at a large organization should consider rotating their product managers between a few different areas before moving them into more senior roles to build a range of skills sustainably. Product managers at a startup will likely get to experience all of these skills in rapid succession as their teams iterate quickly to identify product-market-fit and the right set of features for their product.

Does the framework change for “craftmaster” vs. “leadership” paths?

We have focused this framework more on the leadership path, but there is a continued path as an individual contributor, especially within larger organizations. Senior product managers, principals, and distinguished product management roles often see product managers tackle increasingly complex problems and mentor their colleagues on critical product skills while remaining in the “craftmaster” path.

Where do tangential functions fit in?

Some roles work closely with product managers to enable the full execution of products, but they are excluded on this map as they are adjacent to a product manager career path. A few of these functions include pricing analysts, product marketers, and product operations. 

What happens after VP of Product?

The next step after VP of Product is very dependent on the organization. Some VPs of Product already report to the CEO or a business unit owner, in which case, those roles would be the next step. In other organizations, a Chief Product Officer role exists and becomes the next step. Data from Emsi shows that there has been a 140% increase in CPO postings from Nov 2019 to Nov 2020; a clear reflection of organizations’ increasing awareness of the value of the role of product leadership in aligning customer needs, technology, and business strategy, and the increasing number of opportunities for advancement to the executive suite in this field.

Next Steps: Putting Words Into Action

We formed the Product Management Standards Board to increase clarity of and
access to skills and careers so the next generation of product management talent can maximize their global impact in organizations. Our career framework is a first step toward achieving this goal, but it’s only effective if followed by action.

To put this theory into action, we have started using this framework within our
organizations to:

  • Explain career progression and roles across our teams to guide development conversations and linking individual activities to strategic objectives on our product teams.
  • Guide high-potential employees on how to maximize their leadership skills.
  • Evaluate job candidates based on their skills match with the function for which they are applying, rather than exclusively what schools they’ve gone to or previous roles they’ve held. 

If you could benefit from these same actions, we encourage you to join us in using the framework for similar purposes in your organizations. Our industry needs to use a common language around product management, and that language extends beyond our board.

This is a living document, and we’ll be seeking feedback from partners in our executive teams, industry associations, and peers around the world. We’re also asking you. If you have feedback on how this could be useful for you, please let us know at cheers@ga.co.

By coalescing on what it takes to succeed in product management careers, we can begin to solve some of the pertinent talent challenges facing the profession and better prepare the next generation of leaders. We look forward to working to standardize product management career paths together.

Can You Learn Creativity? The Answer Might Surprise You

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lightbulbs

Creativity is a trait that is as much desired as it is admired. Many of us wish we were a more creative person — that we always had the inspiration and the creative “spark” that allowed Picasso to paint Les Desmoiselles D’Avignon or Paul McCartney to write “Hey Jude.” And we as individuals aren’t the only ones who find value in creativity; today, businesses are taking note too. In a 2010 IBM global survey of more than 1500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, creativity was selected as the most crucial factor for future success. That’s right — the most crucial factor, above hard work, discipline, integrity, or vision.

Related Story: The Secret to Being Happy, Healthy, and More Productive at Work

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How to Build a Brilliant Visual Product Roadmap

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roadmap

As Product Managers, building product roadmaps is a crucial part of our job. Yet most of us still use outdated tools for product roadmapping — Excel, PowerPoint, wikis, etc. — to try and keep multiple teams on track toward the same goals. It’s painful. The good news is that there’s a better way.

We understand that building a strategic product roadmap is not easy and that your business colleagues always want to know what’s coming next. It’s time to lead your product with conviction. Take a radical new approach to roadmapping because your company needs it and you deserve to build the future and enjoy what you do.

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Four Traits That Every Great Product Manager Shares

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Product Manager Image

Product management is a role that consists of diverse responsibilities—and therefore requires diverse strengths. Methodical organization, creative thinking, and vision are just a few assets necessary to be an effective PM.

This variety of project manager traits is what attracts so many to the field, and makes their work endlessly interesting and challenging. But it takes a certain type of personality to thrive in this capacity. If you’re considering a foray into this field, take a look at some of the qualities that project managers share to see if they resonate with you.

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How to Write the Best Problem Statement for Your Startup

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probstatement-blog-picjumbo

The Lean Startup Methodology changed the way we go about starting businesses. Instead of creating a business plan worthy of a Harvard Business School case study, we go out into the market space that we know and find a real problem. Then, we validate the pain point and see how the market is dealing with, compensating for, or otherwise working around that specific problem. Next, we determine if the market participants are willing to pay for a solution to the problem. If they see value, then we solve the problem.

Of course, it’s never that simple, but that’s the basic process in a nutshell. Atlanta entrepreneur David Cummings recently wrote that this process, from discovering the problem to getting to product market fit, generally takes about two years. Finding a problem is usually fairly clear. Validating the problem takes longer. Finding customers who are willing to pay takes a little longer, and building a product that fits the market takes a long time and usually includes several pivots or small deviations from the original product idea.

At the core of everything involved in creating a startup is the customer pain point. But many times, the best product for solving that problem doesn’t win. Why? Because the makers of that solution are really good at solving said problem, but not good at all at explaining what exactly the problem is or what its root cause consists of. In other words, the entrepreneur who can communicate better usually wins. That is why it is so vitally important to be able to explain the problem you are solving to anyone so that they understand it completely. But how do you do that?

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Tips on How to Negotiate Salary

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A PROFESSIONAL HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR SHARES THEIR RECOMMENDATIONS

Chris Voss Never Split the Difference Book

Wrangling job compensation is easier than you think when you’re armed with the tools and tricks that help the FBI save lives.

The tech industry is nothing if not competitive as startups, mom-and-pop shops, and Fortune 500 companies fight for top talent, developers, designers, data scientists, and more find themselves in a mad dash to get in the door.

Once they’re there, an offer may be a testament to their technical skills and experience. However, the true mettle of one’s professional prowess lies in securing the salary or benefits package you want. When you’re in the throes of how to negotiate salary, don’t sell yourself short. Instead, ask yourself: What would Chris Voss do?

During his 24 years in the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit, Voss used expert verbal and psychological tactics to defuse and control more than 150 international hostage cases. Many of the high-stakes situations were a matter of life or death — with rescues ranging from military contractors captured in Colombia to journalists kidnapped in Iraq and Gaza.

Now, he empowers people with valuable negotiation strategies to contend with tough professional and personal circumstances. As the founder and CEO of the consulting firm The Black Swan Group, he advises Fortune 500 companies through their most challenging negotiations. And in his book, the illuminating Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, his expert advice reveals how powerful language, a “pleasant persistence”, empathy, and listening can give you an edge in getting a promotion, buying a car, consulting with a partner, and beyond.

In the book excerpt below, learn Voss’s concrete skill set that contributes to regarding a current employer or prospective employer as an ally for negotiating your next salary.

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5 Things Great Product Managers Do Every Day

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Assessing-You-Products-Market-ViabilityMy favorite product managers are quietly powerful. Every day they take small steps that move their teams and business forward in a meaningful way. But they do it without a lot of hoopla, taking a confident yet unassuming approach.

After all, product managers have a lot on their plate every day. They are responsible for the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition for their product. It is a big responsibility that requires facilitating and collaborating with many different teams — both internal and external — without the formal authority to manage those teams. It requires a unique mix of humility and strength.

However, that quiet power does not mean leading product is easy. I realized early on that the daily life of a product manager is unpredictable, hectic, and sometimes very tough.

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Alumni Story: From Idea to Kickstarter Sensation

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Student Chris Place

Many people have creative product ideas, but don’t know how to turn them into a reality. That rang true for Product Management grad Chris Place, who wanted to solve a common problem: People aspire to bring lunch to work, but often fail. He turned to GA’s Product Management course in Hong Kong to give him the tools to create and launch Prepd, a sleek lunchbox and companion app that aims to make meal prep fun.

“GA helped me understand marketing and creative storytelling,” Place said. “How can I tie together my product skills with a compelling marketing plan to bring my product to launch?” After the course, he leveraged his learnings to launch a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $1.4 million to make Prepd a reality. “We never expected this to get this big,” Place says.