Recommended Books for Product Managers
What kind of books should you read as a product manager?
If you would have googled about what books to read to become the best product manager, we are sure you would have been overwhelmed with the plethora of information or product management books that are available. In today’s times, it’s not difficult to find the best product management books, it’s more important now about finding the right book to help you start your journey in cracking the PM Interview.
And if you are already working as a PM, finding the right product management books perfect for your phase in your career is even a more difficult task. Worry not, we are here to make your search easier and get you right to the best product management books you should be reading to make the best out of the knowledge that is available.
Why are Product Management Books important?
But the first question is, when there are so many videos and courses out there, why are product management books needed to be read, in the first place? There are times when you need to drill down deep into subjects where all the courses and those short videos combined will not be able to provide you with the depth of knowledge. Additionally, online resources sometimes fail to provide real-life case studies of products that have been successful or failed, which we feel is very important to be understood by all Product managers. It’s essential to get the knowledge right from the horse’s mouth too, and there’s no better way to do it than reading the best product management books from some renowned PMs across the globe.
Jumping straight to some of the best product management books that you should absolutely be adding to your product management books' list, here are our favourites that we feel every PM or an aspirant must read.
1. Inspired by Marty Cagan
As cliched as it sounds, this book should be the go-to book when you have decided to venture into this domain, but still feel clueless about what to expect. This book has been famous to provide a glimpse into the everyday life of a Product Manager, how the product teams work and collaborate, and how they finally ship the products. It gives a glimpse into the lives of PMs and is helpful in removing misconceptions around the role.
Since you now know what to expect from the role, the next step is to prepare for the product interview. Apart from the online resources, we strongly suggest going through these to make your preparation full-proof.
2. Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
This book gives an exhaustive list of questions and structure to frame your answers well, before appearing for your product management interview. It also gives you an insight into how interviews are conducted and the process followed in some of the top companies, so you have an idea beforehand. Its section on the resume helps you to create the best product resume while focusing on what needs to be highlighted the most.
3. Decode & Conquer by Lewis C. Lin
Another favourite book to conquer your next product management interview, we cannot suggest this book enough. Lewis has been able to jot down some of the best interview questions with their answers, to give an overview of what category of questions you can expect.
4. The Product Manager Handbook by Carl Shan
If you have ever been curious how PMs in the most successful companies in the world answer some tough questions in their interviews, this is the book you should be reading. Interviews from PMs of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter to name a few have all been listed down with structured answers which can help you prep beforehand on how to answer questions.
5. Hired: How To Get a Product Management Job
From getting hired at your dream company to general tips and tricks and great advice to follow, this step by step guide helps you transition into the product role you have been dreaming of.
Link here.
Now that you have joined as a Product Manager, the next question that comes up is - what to even expect from the first 30, 60, 90 days in your role, how do teams get down to rolling out their features and how can you make the best out of this role. We have some suggestions here for you to make your journey easier.
6. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen
The transition into a new PM role usually takes some time, and varies across companies. It’s important to understand that at the end of the day, you need to chart a path for yourself which makes it easier for you to get the job done. This book helps in prioritizing the right tasks, identifying what needs to be done, how they need to be done, and other tried and tested advice that can help you in each role you take in.
7. The Product Book by Carlos González de Villaumbrosia & Josh Anon
For a step to step guide to follow during your initial days in the role, this book should be your bible. Filled with practical advice, best practices, and expert tips from seasoned PMs, this book will help you navigate the initial days, make you equipped with collaborating with various stakeholders, and remove any misconceptions you have had about the role in the first place.
Link here.
When you do start as a PM, we are sure everyone around you will ask you to understand your customer first, whether it’s a B2C or a B2B company you are working for; at the end of the day no matter how many meetings you are running to, how many sprints you are pushing the features in, it’s all for your customer. Even though there are customer research teams in organizations, PMs must understand their own customers like the back of their hands. And to get started on this, we are here to recommend you a few product management books just for this purpose.
8. Validating Product Ideas: Through Lean User Research by Tomer Sharon
When talking about user research, PMs need to follow a structured way to go about it. This book helps in answering questions that are a useful starting point for product managers and entrepreneurs to use to decide which user research method to use, and it also throws light as to how user research can help at different points of the product development journey.
Link here.
9. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
When talking about user behaviour and user research, there’s a reason this book has been recommended by almost everyone who’s been in the PM domain for some time. This is a fascinating read that gives an understanding about super addictive products, what they do best, how they have mastered the hooked model by understanding their users’ behaviour and how can you as a PM replicate the same in one way or the other.
10. Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
If there’s one learning you should be getting from this book is that users use any product to feel awesome themselves, and that’s what all PMs should be working towards. An insight into user’s behaviour, and a guide to listen to your users better and connecting it to modern agile practices - this book ticks off all what you need when understanding you user behaviour and tracing the next actionable steps.
It’s also necessary to understand by PMs and the entire organization what their objectives are, how do they measure them, and what can they do to set the right tasks to achieve that goal. Organizations usually do it on a quarterly basis, wherein PMs are expected to contribute to the overall strategy of the company by defining these objectives. We recommend the following book to make your life easier.
11. Measure What Matters: OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth
What needs to be appreciated in this book is that the author has penned it down as a one approach fits all, be it any size of team or organization. It’s a guide on how to set up the objectives and key results at each level of the hierarchy - organization level, team level, etc., and how can they contribute to the success of an organization, in their own individual capacity.
Your work as a PM doesn’t end here though, the role involves varied levels of collaboration, prioritization, communication, strategizing, to name a few. Getting your feet into the role more concretely, we can suggest you a few product management books which will help you understand each aspect of your role and how to ace it.
12. Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century by Matt LeMay
Matt in this book has tried to demystify the role of a PM, and provide some sense of frameworks to make it easier to comprehend. His most talked through CORE framework, will help you in focussing only on what’s important. His advices all throughout the book involves embracing chaos, to look at the bigger picture you are solving, and how a PM should always strive to step out of comfort to seek clarity, how to ask the WHYs, HOWs, and WHATs, and make sense of the challenges that are thrown at you.
13. Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp
We are sure you must have heard the word “sprint” being thrown around a lot when you talk to your engineering, frontend and release team. The founder of sprints in organizations, Jake Knapp created a step-by-step guide to make the entire product team more productive, functional and ship out features in an accelerated manner, without waiting for long weeks. According to him, the more features you ship out quickly, the better you can work on improving them or building upon them. And, that’s how the approach of PMs too should be in organizations, hence this is a highly recommended book.
14. Getting To Yes : Negotiating an agreement without giving in by Roger Fisher
A day won’t go by when you as a PM won’t be negotiating with your stakeholders, be it on prioritizing the right features, shipping a feature in a particular way, how the design looks, and so on. This is one of the best product management books we have come across on negotiation. It is the best that can help you get out of sticky situations, whenever you find yourself in soup, and recommends alternative solutions you can try to make sure every stakeholder is finally aligned.
When we talk about Design Thinking for Product Managers, we feel it is essential to master this, since at the heart of this concept, the intention is to improve and create better products for the users, to keep iterating to make them more awesome and keep improving their user experience. To deep dive into this concept we recommend you a few product management books so as to get started on this.
15. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web & Mobile Usability by Steve Krug
This book focuses on insights, examples and learnings around website & mobile usability, how to keep it simple, user-centric, where the user is not forced to think much when they are using your product - isn’t this the ultimate goal for any PM? This is why we highly recommend this book.
16. The Design of Everyday Things by Dan Norman
One of the classic books for designers and PM, Dan has talked about the ultimate goal to be fulfilled - guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time. It asks the reader to keep things simple, take inspiration from everyday things around them. The key learning it gives away is to design things to accommodate humans, not the other way around.
17. The Design Thinking Playbook: Mindful Digital Transformation of Teams, Products, Services, Businesses and Ecosystems (Design Thinking Series) by Michael Lewrick
This book is one of those actionable guides that designers and PMs can follow down to a T. It makes the readers challenges the status quo to make better designs by questioning the current mindset and what and how can things be done better.
We know you all want to move up the ladder, be the product leader you have always wanted to be someday, be the motivation to others and inspire more people to be a part of this culture. But, this isn’t a day’s job, you’ll need to imbibe the sense of leadership starting day 1. When you feel like a product leader yourself, only then you will be able to leave the mark you have always wanted to. To make this progression simpler for you and to imbibe the right motivation in yourself first, we recommend some deeper product management books for you to read.
18. Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams by Richard Banfield & Martin Eriksson
It is one of the best product book out there that clearly talks about the difference between product management and product leadership. It will push you to imbibe the feeling that your job is more than just shipping a feature, instead the success or failure of the entire company falls on your shoulder. The author has provided snippets from great product leaders as well and what makes them a leader in the first place.
19. Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products (Silicon Valley Product Group) by Marty Cagan
To put it in simple words, this book is for everyone who wishes to create a strong, robust organization keeping their product in centre. It inspires readers to empower their product teams and how and why is it essential, and how to take each team from ordinary to extraordinary as a Product Leader.
20. High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
It’s supposed to be a classic read when we talk about leadership in general. It’s a guide that covers all areas relating to focusing on organizational output, on leading your teams, on leading enterprises of any sizes, and leading the people, while focusing on how you are contributing to each area.
We hope that the compilation could help you pick the right book as per what you are looking for right now in your career, and can take the first step to dive deeper into Product Management.
