- What is Product Management?
- Why are Product Management Books important?
- Top 25 Product Management Books
What is Product Management?
Product management is an organisational function dealing with the designing of new products, planning, verification, forecasting, pricing, and product launch. This complete cycle is product management. This skill is all about having a shared understanding with your team and your stakeholders about what your product is, for whom are you building, and most importantly, the importance of developing your product.
To enhance your management skill check out some of the best product management books in the list given below and also a free product management course online to build a rewarding career as a product manager.
Why are Product Management Books important?
Product management is one of the fields which changes according to the trends. Whether you’re a newbie or an experienced IT product manager trying to keep up with changing trends, product management books have a lot to offer.
Below are some of the benefits you can gain from reading the best product management books:
Online learning can teach you what to do, but books can teach you the ‘why’ and reasoning behind the practices.
Product management books can help you understand a variety of technical terms and how they work.
Reading has been shown to help you focus. If you have difficulty learning product management through podcasts or online videos, books may be a good option for you.
Some of the must-read product management books on this list can help you to boost your creativity.
Top 25 Product Management Books
Here are the top 25 Product Management books
1. How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
2. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
3. Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden
4. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
5. Thinking in Bets: by Annie Duke
6. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
7. The Design of Everything by Don Norman
8. Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz
9. Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
10. Cracking the PM Interview
1. How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal’s book “The Hooked” helps product managers understand exactly what it is that makes consumers habitually engage with certain products and what qualities make or break a product. This book also explains the four-step product development process that most large corporations use when developing and marketing their products.
Here are the 4 steps in the Hook Model:
- Trigger: The things that prompt users to interact with a certain product.
- Action: A character that is carried out in anticipation of a reward.
- Variable Reward: How to create a product craving and desire within a user.
- Investment: When and how a user invests their time, money, data into a product.
2. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Rob Fitzpatrick, an entrepreneur with over ten years of experience, wrote the book “The Mom Test.” This book explains how customer conversations can go wrong and how you can learn from them, improve your communication skills, and feel confident in your business decisions.
3. Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden
Jeff and Josh are the authors of Lean UX. This book has become the preferred method for working with cross-functional teams, as well as for learning the tactics and techniques required for incorporating design, experimentation, iteration, and other processes into the life cycle of a product.
4. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Eric wrote The Lean Startup to focus primarily on startup products that must persevere through every day as it is filled with uncertainty and forge a path to a successful business. This is divided into three sections: Vision, Steer and Accelerate.
Vision: Identifies the entrepreneur.
Steer: Helps you to make assumptions, test them, evaluate progress.
Accelerate: explores techniques such as build, measure.
5. Thinking in Bets: by Annie Duke
Annie Duke wrote the book “Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts.” This book employs a behavioural science approach to teach how to make confident decisions in the face of uncertainty by assessing what you do and don’t know.
6. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
The Hard Thing About Hard Things is written by ben, who is brutally honest about the fact that all the glitters are not gold! This book is worth enough to understand the struggles and failures that successful people experience.
7. The Design of Everything by Don Norman
Don Norman reassures us that the fault does not lie within us. Our error is the result of a poorly designed product –– one that was possibly designed with aesthetics in mind instead of functionality. Or perhaps it was just laziness.
The Design of Everything is written by Don, which teaches readers how to design and understand the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology.
8. Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz
Lean Analytics is written by Croll and Ben. This book helps readers determine the metrics that matter the most to their business so they can make well-informed decisions that will push them forward.
9. Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
This book is written by Marty Cagan. In it, he takes you through some of the most valuable lessons he has learned in his time working with some of the biggest companies today. If you’re looking for a voice of authority in Product Management, this is a pretty great one!
10. Cracking the PM Interview
Cracking the PM Interview is written by Gayle McDowell. This book has become the #1 interview prep book for aspiring product managers.
Some of the other product management books are listed below:
- The Product Book- An all-encompassing guide for PMs at any levels
- Tribe of Mentors- Varied advice from a long and impressive list of top performers
- My Product Management Toolkit- For when you’re desperately seeking the next problem-solving tool
- Hired: How to Get a Product Management Job- Land your next job with ease, by learning how from the best of the best
- The Lean Product Playbook- Every contemporary PMs go-to guide
- Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days- How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
- Launch: The Roadmap to Product Management Success- Learn how top PMs adapt to shifts in trends and tech culture
- Ship It: Silicon Valley Product Managers Reveal All- All the best-kept secrets from Silicon Valley
- Game Thinking- Amy Jo Kim lays down what product people can learn from the games industry
- Product Mindset: How to Get Inside Your Customer’s Mind- Because the best PM is a customer-obsessed PM
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us- Understanding motivation, both your customers and your own
- Dare to Lead
- When Coffee & Kale Compete- See Jobs To Be Done in a whole new light and get better at building products people love
- The Making of a Manager- I learned then one of my first lessons of management—the best outcomes come
- What You Do Is Who You Are- Create your company culture
But wait, there’s more…
There’s no excuse to stop investing in yourself, broadening your horizons, and learning more about your craft. Take up our free product management course that focuses on how to drive the products to success, what are the various product management strategies, Product Manager and his roles and many more valuable topics on product management as well.
