Books on Product Management

This is not a “read everything” program. Select a source for your current work problem, formulate a question before you read it, and after each book, apply one idea to a real solution, otherwise knowledge will remain a summary.

If you need to build a foundation

Inspired — Marty Cagan

A good starting point to talk about strong product teams, the risks of value, convenience, feasibility, and viability. The book is useful to read critically: organizational examples grew out of a specific context of technology companies and are not a ready-made organizational structure for any business.

Escaping the Build Trap — Melissa Perri

It helps to recognize the feature factory and move from feature release to outcome management. It is especially useful for leaders who need to link strategy, portfolio of initiatives and the work of individual teams.

The Lean Product Playbook — Dan Olsen

Consistently links the target user, unclosed needs, value proposition, MVP and testing. Suitable as a practical route for a new initiative; do not think of the process as a linear conveyor.

If you want to improve discovery

Continuous Discovery Habits — Teresa Torres

Practice regular interviews, mapping opportunities and checking multiple decisions. It is useful for teams whose research only happens before a large project or is completely separated from delivery.

Competing Against Luck — Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan

It develops the logic of Jobs to Be Done: people choose a product for the sake of progress in a particular situation. After reading, it is worth practicing to distinguish the job from the function, the general need and the portrait of the person.

The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick

A short guide to talking to potential customers without compliments, general opinions, and selling your own idea. This is especially helpful before the first interview.

Just Enough Research — Erika Hall

Helps you choose a research method to question and limit the team. It’s a good way to remove the false fork between “big academic research” and data-free decisions.

If you need to work with metrics and experiments

Lean Analytics — Alistair Croll, Benjamin Yoskovitz

It explains why, at different stages and in different business models, growth restriction is expressed by different metrics. Numerical benchmarks from the book become obsolete over time, but the logic of choosing a focus remains useful.

Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments — Ron Kohavi, Diane Tang, Ya Xu

Detailed A/B test practices: metric selection, power, data quality, network effects, and organizational experiment infrastructure. Not every PM needs a complete one, but the chapters on interpreting errors are useful for any high-traffic team.

How to Measure Anything — Douglas Hubbard

A book about decisions in the face of uncertainty. It helps to stop considering only what is already in the analytical system as measurable and to match observation with the price of error.

If you need to put together strategy and positioning

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt

Separate strategy and wish list. The working core is the diagnosis of the situation, the guiding policy and the agreed set of actions; this framework is convenient to apply when reviewing the product strategy.

Obviously Awesome — April Dunford

Positioning Practice Book: Competitive Alternatives, Distinctive Opportunities, Value, Target Segment and Market Category. It is especially useful for B2B teams where the product is difficult to explain in one sentence.

Playing to Win — A.G. Lafley, Roger L. Martin

It builds strategy as a cascade of elections: the desire to win, the field of play, the way to win, the necessary capabilities and management systems. The framework is good at identifying the contradictions between ambition and real investment.

Monetizing Innovation — Madhavan Ramanujam, Georg Tacke

Pricing and packaging before development, not after launch. The key idea is willingness to pay, segmentation and value metrics should be explored along with the product itself.

If you need to improve delivery and teamwork

Shape Up — Ryan Singer

Time-limited bets, shape tasks and team responsibility for the decision. The full model isn’t for everyone, but the ideas of appetite, boundaries, and hill charts are useful for high-uncertainty initiatives. The book is available online.

Accelerate — Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim

Research on engineering practices and delivery performance. It helps to discuss speed and stability as a connected system rather than choosing between “quick” and “quality.”

Team Topologies — Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais

On team boundaries, cognitive load and interaction modes. Useful in organizational design, when most of the time is spent on inter-team dependencies.

The Manager’s Path — Camille Fournier

The practical route of engineering management from mentoring to organization management. For a product leader, it is valuable as a way to better understand the expectations of technical partners and the design of a growing function.

How to turn reading into practice

1. Write down one decision that the book should help you make.
2. Note not the quotes, but the author’s assumptions and the context of the examples.
3. After reading, formulate a change in your work for one to two weeks.
4. Determine the observed result in advance: a new artifact, reduced decision time, verified assumption, or cancelled work.
5. In retro, decide whether to leave the practice, change it or refuse.

To select a theme, you can go back to Directory Index or open Development Routes.