Books

One of the most famous books on Product Management. The author does a great job explaining the role of a Product Manager and how it relates to the rest of the organization. He also has great insights on the product lifecycle and tips on areas like rapid prototyping. A must for any Product Manager.

A must-read for learning more about people’s dynamics. The biggest weapon of every Product Manager is their ability to influence and earn the trust of others. The lessons in this book are invaluable both inside and outside work. One of those books that you’ll come back to over and over again.

Understanding the business of software is key for every Product Manager. Software, is not only about code or about the technology. It is also about ROI, the people involved and the full product lifecycle. This book also includes a history of how software became a business.

This is a great introduction to UX and usability. Good primer for every Product Manager that’s starting to work with designers and UX teams.

This is a masterpiece that every Product Manager must read. Your overall product strategy changes whether you have crossed the chasm or not. Where you are relative to the chasm impacts your personas, roadmap, prioritization, messaging, the way you enable sales, etc. If you don’t know these concepts, then you are probably flying blind.

A must-read for learning more about people’s dynamics. The biggest weapon of every Product Manager is their ability to influence and earn the trust of others. The lessons in this book are invaluable both inside and outside work. One of those books that you’ll come back to over and over again.

Leadership is a key skill for Product Managers. Like any other skill, leadership can be learned and polished. If you are just starting or need a good refresher, this is a great book for you. These short articles by world renowned thought leaders will remind you why we got into this profession in the first place.

Product Managers negotiate all the time. We negotiate with our peers, our executives, our developers, our vendors, etc. This is a great book with very useful negotiation techniques.

Communication is a key skill for Product Managers. This clever and entertaining book takes you into the world of comics and reveals secrets of master storytellers.

Visual communication is a must have for Product Managers. Dan Roam takes you step-by-step on how to draw anything and how to solve complex problems with pictures. Great skill for next time you need to explain your ideas on the whiteboard.

Product Management is about influence, therefore it is important to build a strong network inside and outside your company. This book has great advice on networking, plus on building and maintaining relationships. The author explains many techniques, so you can pick and chose the ones that work for you and your personality style.

Building and cultivating great teams is at the heart of Product Management. This quick read provides a lot of actionable information about dealing with difficult teams. It’s called a fable, but I can tell you that the situations in this book are nothing far from a typical day in a PM’s life.

Advancing your career is your responsibility, not your company’s. Many people believe that just doing a good job is enough to get noticed and get ahead. Nothing is farther from the truth, especially as you climb up the ladder. This is a great resource for learning about the nuances of getting ahead without burning bridges.

The more options the better, right? Think again. This great research-based book shows how our brains really work and the consequences of having too many options. It will change your perspective about choice on everyday life and will be very helpful when selecting your product’s next feature set. Basically, more features doesn’t automatically make your product better.

One of the most famous books on Product Management. The author does a great job explaining the role of a Product Manager and how it relates to the rest of the organization. He also has great insights on the product lifecycle and tips on areas like rapid prototyping. A must for any Product Manager.

A must-read for any PM. Rich Mironov provides great insight into real-world PM challenges and provides great actionable advice. He has an amazing focus on the business side of creating products.

This is a masterpiece that every Product Manager must read. Your overall product strategy changes whether you have crossed the chasm or not. Where you are relative to the chasm impacts your personas, roadmap, prioritization, messaging, the way you enable sales, etc. If you don’t know these concepts, then you are probably flying blind.

Another excellent book by master Geoffrey A. Moore. Great information on how to innovate and the difference between “solution-based” and “product-based” companies. Understanding what type of company you are in is key to understanding how to innovate, who to partner with, and what the overall product strategy should be.

Understanding the business of software is key for every Product Manager. Software, is not only about code or about the technology. It is also about ROI, the people involved and the full product lifecycle. This book also includes a history of how software became a business.

Every Product Manager must be very familiar with the concept of Strategy and how it relates to her Product. Strategy is a wide and complicated topic, so like the cover of this book states: “if you read nothing else on strategy, read this definitive articles by HBR”.

If you are interested in learning how successful companies establish their culture and how they get employees to truly embrace their vision, then this book is for you. These lessons can be translated into Product Management to create loyal and engaged teams and customers.

It is impossible to understand where we are going if we don’t know where we came from. This book details how SAP came to be and how they set the foundation for the modern enterprise systems. Very interesting read for any Product Manager to understand how great companies got started and how they got to be so successful.

Enterprise software usually has a professional services component. This is the definite guide to understand that business model, their pains, their needs and how they relate to the product you are building. It’s an important area of the complete product lifecycle, therefore it’s important for Product Managers to understand it.

Taught at MBA classes, this great book reinforces the fact that user and market research are the key to any successful product launch. Best of all, Dr Adams explains how to do it without breaking the bank.

Another great book by Dr Adams. It shows all the common pitfalls entrepreneurs fall for. Very good read if you are working at a small start-up. One of many take-aways: “you don’t really know your customer”.

This classic war book, written over 2000 years ago holds amazing relevance for the Product Manager of today. It is a masterpiece on leadership, understanding your competition and always being prepared.

A great step by step description of how to implement the Lean Startup concepts. A great read for Product Managers working in small companies because it shows many examples of how Lean Startup looks in practice.

Product Management has a big strategy component. New features need to come from user research and understanding of the market. In this great book, Daniel Burrus teaches you to analyze and anticipate technology trends so your product can always be ahead of the curve.

The fat smoker knows he needs to quit smoking and lose weight, and yet, he finds excuses not to do it. In this masterpiece, David Maister explains all the ways companies deviate from long-term strategies in exchange for short-term returns. Is your product a fat smoker?

There are many possible strategies for your product. This book focuses on finding a new niche and dominating it as opposed to competing in an already crowded market. This approach might not work for all product, but if you want to see what a strategy creation and implementation looks like from end-to-end, then I highly recommend this book.

This is a great introduction to UX and usability. Good primer for every Product Manager that’s starting to work with designers and UX teams.

Nir Eyal does a fantastic job in describing, in detail, the process for creating habit forming products. This is a great read for any Product Manager looking to improve user engagement in their applications.

This is a must-read book for any Product Manager. We’ve heard a million times that we need to talk to our users to understand their needs. This book tells you exactly how, step-by-step, with many examples and excellent advice. Can’t recommend it enough.

Another great introduction to UX design. It covers user research, interaction design and visual design. It’s a great primer for Product Managers that have only worked with Engineering and are now introducing UX into their product lifecycle. It includes a lot of “how-to” guides and describes some of the standard deliverables you can expect from a UX team.

Agile is the most common software development approach. Therefore, Product Managers need to be familiar with it so they can better collaborate with their development teams. This book is a great introduction to Agile from a PM perspective. It provides great detail on how to manage, prioritize and groom and Agile backlog.

Highly recommended for Product Managers new to Cloud software. This book will help you understand the technology and will help you speak the same language as your development team.

REST APIs are key to harvesting the power of the “programmable web”. For Product Managers new to Cloud software, this book is a great resource to have more fluent technical conversations with your customers and development team.

Great foundation for enterprise architecture. Understanding architecture is always a key skill for any Product Manager.

An excellent resource for understanding UI patterns for mobile. Even if you are not building mobile apps, this book will strengthen your understanding of UI patterns and will sharpen your eye for good UI design.

A very useful review of many UI bloopers out there. This is a great read if you’ve never designed a UI or if you are new to UX and working with designers. You can only provide good feedback if you understand at least the basic patterns. The patterns in this book are a little bit old, but once you understand the idea, you’ll develop a good eye for any type software.

Great read for understanding how to apply the Lean approach to UX. This book helps you streamline the UX process and reduce waste. It covers the importance of MVP, prototypes and how to integrate UX into Agile.