My Top Five Product Management Books
And Tips for Maximising Your Reading Time
These are my top five product books that you should read no matter which point of your product management career you are at.
My all-time favourite book is hands down Melissa Perri’s Escaping the Build Trap. I have read this book very quickly and come back to individual chapters regularly. It has everything you need to know no matter where you’re at in your career. It describes what the build trap is, defines the role of the product manager and what good looks like, explains strategy, probably one of the hardest things to learn, outlines a great process and goes into detail about product-led organizations.
This is a close second, Marty Cagan’s Inspired. Some people call this the product management bible and I can see why. Again, this is a book to come back to for specific information regularly.
In the first part, we get to learn lessons from top companies, followed by understanding who the right people are in the context of product development and understanding the different roles involved. Part three highlights the right product and explains roadmaps and strategy. In part four the right process is emphasized, detailing lots of techniques for goal setting and discovery and lastly, the right culture is laid out.
These first two books are very specifically about product management. The following three are about creating OKRs, being outcome-oriented, and empowering teams, all crucial skills for product managers.
I had a lot about OKRs online in different blogs, joined webinars and watched product talks on YouTube and I thought I had a good grasp on them until I finally read Christina Wodtke’s Radical Focus. Do yourself a favour and make this the starting point of…
