Product Management Reading List
I am sick of screens.
Email. Phones. Spreadsheets. Jira. Zoom meetings. Skype Happy Hours. Online School. Facetime playdates.
At the end of the day I don’t want to look at another screen. Previously my wife and I would watch something together after our son goes to bed. But after being online all-day we have no desire for more screen time.
The bright side of our digital fatigue? More time to read.
Here are a few of my favorite product management books that I’ve read over the last few months. And if you have some that I’ve missed — let me know! Or recommend them on Goodreads!
Product Management’s Sacred Seven: The Skills Required to Crush Product Manager Interviews and be a World-Class PM
by Parth Detroja ,Neel Mehta and Aditya Agashe
A fantastic book covering the seven main knowledge domains of product management:
- Product Design
- Economics
- Psychology
- User Experience
- Data Science
- Law & Policy
- Marketing & Growth.
To be clear this is a THICK tome — it reminds me of an academic textbook more than any other book on this list. But don’t let its hefty nature scare you away! Sacred Seven pulls relatable, useful examples from across the tech world and provides insights valuable for PMs of every skill level.
Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Brad Kowitz
Sprint is an accessible, thorough book detailing the ideal process for creating digital products. The book is valuable for the whole team: product managers, designers, engineers and CEOs.
Not running from the big questions, Sprint challenges its reader by forcing them to look at their process:
- Where’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start?
- What will your ideas look like in real life?
- How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution to a problem?
Even if a company didn’t utilize every recommendation in this book (which I certainly have not), they will definitely find something useful for their process.
The Tyranny of Metrics
by Jerry Z Muller
Spend any time in product management circles and you will undoubtedly hear talk of metrics.
“What are the metrics telling us?”
“The data doesn’t support your argument.”
“Numbers don’t lie.”
But sometimes they do lie. Sometimes metrics lie and create bad products or worse they perpetuate bad public policy and change the lives of entire communities. These lies are sometimes accidental, sometimes intentional but they always have consequences.
The Tyranny of Metrics is a relatively short read on the dangers of following metrics without a deeper understanding of the underlying data and the process that created the metrics in question. Showing examples from education to the corporate world to government policy Muller reminds us that it is okay to be informed by metrics, not completely driven by them and that we should follow the old proverb: “Trust, but verify”.
Inspired: How To Create Tech Products Users Love
by Marty Kagan
Inspired is a high-level look at the digital product development process — I think of this as Product Management 101.
Author Marty Kagan uses Inspired to cover a wide variety of topics including:
- Roles and responsibilities of a development team.
- The product “discovery” process
- Prototyping and usability testing
- How to build a product team
Inspired is probably most valuable for those at the beginning of their Product Management journey, but it is still detailed enough that it has something to offer for everyone. I had read this several years ago and again this year — finding value during both reads.
Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century
By Matt Lemay
The most conversational and accessible book on this list, Product Management in Practice is the book to read last. You’ve read about how sprints SHOULD run. You’ve learned about what the duties of a product manager SHOULD be. But what happens when reality doesn’t meet your expectations? That’s where this book comes in.
Lemay has written a book that gives practical, applicable advice on how to be a product manager. Though short, the book covers the standard topics found in product management books while grounding the information in the real-world.
This quote sums up Lemay’s book best:
“In theory, product management is about triangulating business goals with user needs.In practice, product management often means pushing relentlessly to get any kind of clarity about what business “goals” really are.In theory, product management is a masterfully played game of chess.In practice, product management often feels like a hundred simultaneous games of checkers.”
