What are the best books to get started in product management? Sometimes, I’m asked: what are the best books for any product manager? This is the ultimate list.
These are my go-tos to bring anyone into product management, or to level up your existing product management skills.
Inspired – this is like The Bible for individual contributor product management. I’m sure you’ve read it by now, but if you haven’t, pick this one up! Inspired is about all the non-tactical stuff of product management, and is where the industry has been trying to move the PM role to lately. My copy is marked up, bookmarked, and highlighted – and I know lots of PMs and ScrumMasters whose copy is the same way. Can’t recommend this book more.
Escaping the Build Trap – This is kind of a companion book to Inspired. I bet you’ll nod your head alongside every page of this. Experimentation, checking assumptions, of course. But also PM management and team building. This book will make you a better product manager, but may also give you good insight into words and phrases you can use to get the attention of people looking to hire product leaders.
Good Strategy / Bad Strategy – I just love this book. Early on in my PM career, I recognized that different people had different ideas of what “the strategy” or “a strategy” was. That’s still the case, but this book clarified (to me) what the mental model of a generic strategy was. And that enabled me to parse, analyze, and ultimately challenge the strategic ideas of others. It’s good stuff, and has helped as I’ve moved into broader roles.