Let me start with this: props to this person who submitted this question on #AskWiP! It’s a question that many have when they’re starting to build product skills and for good reason — open source product management opportunities are difficult to find. Unlike software engineering, where you’ll find Github projects or non-profit organizations actively looking for volunteers at any level to come on board and contribute, open-source projects that look for volunteer PMs are almost non-existent. Yes, there are ways to possibly gain some experience by attending PM boot camps or online courses where you can experience the entire ideation-to-delivery process, but those are typically paid opportunities.
In this post, I share with you some tactics that you can use to improve your chances of finding the few PM roles that are available in open-source and side projects. Let’s get into this!
Reach out to folks on LinkedIn, Angel.co, or via Slack workspaces to see if they know of any small teams looking to bring on a freelance Product Manager for their product. This route will lead to projects that will help you learn and hone in on your unique PM style.
Here are some quick links to online resources I suggest scoping out for opportunities:
a. LinkedIn — Reach out to your connections! It doesn’t hurt to ask if they may know or have heard of a company looking for a PM to join.
b. Angel.co — Filter by PM openings for early-stage startups that are looking for freelance PMs! More often than not, such startups only need someone to come on for a few hours a week to get the product off the ground and developed.
c. Product-focused Slack Workspaces — Slack groups focused on Product Management are perfect for linking up with a fellow PM to ideate and ship. For example, the Women in Product Slack Workspace has a #sideprojects channel where you can suggest or find a side project to work on. Similarly, you can join the Product School Slack or the MindTheProduct Slack to spin up a product idea with another PM!
Chingu Voyage, for example, is an online coding cohort that will welcome people who’d like to be a PM for a group of three or four developers. Projects of this type are a great way to get involved in both the PM and Engineering sides of the work. They also let you build up experience in creating a backlog, running backlog refinement, prioritizing based on goals and deadlines, and running user research to ensure that the shipped product has value for the end-customer.
If you’ve never heard of Taproot, they’re a volunteer-based project site for non-profit organizations. Though they don’t have a specific listing for organizations searching for product managers, there are quite a few looking for project managers. While Project Management and Product Management are two different fields, consider volunteering if you’re looking for experience working with and managing a team that needs to focus and stay on track for delivery. The projects listed at Taproot offer a fantastic way to give back and also gain marketable experience.
It may be a little scary to start up your own thing, but many of the folks with Product Manager titles have either had a casual side product or have become CEOs or founders of their own products. It’s the work they put in on their own product idea that allowed them to build up an impressive skill set and well-honed product sense.
The process is straightforward: