Through the years of working in Product Management and digital service design I’ve been lucky enough to learn at the feet of many masters, through many excellent books. This list shares the books that stay on my shelf through many Marie Kondo inspired de-cluttering sessions. Note that this is in no particular order.
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The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
Ever wondered why you hear the phrase ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP) so much now? This book is one of the reasons why. A masterclass in identifying the fulcrum in a business where you can apply the least effort to make the most impact with your startup, and the processes to apply. A must read.
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Continuous Discovery Habits – Teresa Torres
Making a product or service that customers really want is the core focus of every product team, but how do you best achieve that? Torres presents an approach to get you to real product market fit for the solutions you build. It revolves around the regular practice of talking with current or potential customers on a regular cadence, aligned with the use of opportunity solution trees to focus what you discuss with them. Highly practical and easy to read, it gives you a clear path to move your product work from feature factory to value delivery. A must read for every product person.
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Lean Analytics – Croll & Yoskovitz
The perfect complement to the Lean Startup book. Teaches you to understand and love the metrics that tell you how your product is doing, leading and laggingm, and which vanity metrics you need to dump as quickly as you can before they convince you to drive your business off a cliff. A must read.
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Talking to Humans – by Giff Constable
The go to book for practical tips on finding out what your customers, or potential customers, really really want. Many startups or companies don’t even talk with (or more importantly listen to) real customers, thinking they know the answers themselves – generally a bad path to finding product market fit. For those of us who do talk with customers, are we getting the most out of these interactions? This book helps you structure customer interviews for success and true learning.
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Competing Against Luck – Clayton M Christensen et al
This book introduces the concept of “jobs to be done” – a framework that in the modern world customers ‘hire’ products and services to solve their needs, or ‘jobs to be done’, and how as a business you can use that to build better offerings. Key to this is applying deep customer insight from empathy and observation, to divine the context and circumstances around the job rather than treat users as a market segment. In the world of increasingly personalised services, this is a great way to think about building and improving your product offerings.
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Leaders Eat Last – Simon Sinek
Sinek is a great observer of people and team behaviour, with a solid portfolio of fascinating video talks online. In this book he focusses on the importance of leaders in an organisation to put the well-being of their team first, fostering a “circle of safety” to protect them from external threats and internal politics. With this foundation of psychological safety, teams can build resilience in themselves and have a commitment to the success of the leader and hence the business.
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The Design of Everyday Things – Donald A Norman
The classic introductory text on usability. You’ll be going around using the word ‘affordance’ like a pro in no time. Note: called ‘Psychology of Everyday Things’ in the US
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Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just seven days
The team from Google Ventures describes how to run a week long sprint to test ideas with real users. Great for everyone building products from new innovation to ongoing tweaks and optimisations.
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Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Good product is as much about psychology as technology, in understanding the ways in which people work and how technology helps (or hinders) them. Getting product done also requires an understanding of how teams work, and what inspires people to get deep into solving a problem for users. This book addresses both of those areas, introducing the concept of ‘flow’ a deep work state where people get things done and also feel more fulfilled.
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The Build Trap – Melissa Perri
Perri offers us her approach to steering companies to being customer-centric and outcome value focussed, rather than feature factory churn. In the form of a story she takes us through her transformation of an organisation that wants to be product led, but doesn’t yet have a blueprint for how to do it. Each chapter layers in both the current challenges, and steps to empower passionate product people to level up their product practice, and educate their leaders on the value of a true product approach – while navigating some of the inevitable challenges that come in real life organisational change. It’s an interesting read, with lots of useful practical tips. Though my one niggle is it can sometimes come across a bit cloying and self-congratulatory and perhaps glosses over some of the real world challenges that can come up – as a thin book fleshing this out might have helped make this a must read.
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Making Ideas Happen – Scott Belsky
A handy toolkit of approaches to help take you and your team’s ideas from inspiration to reality.
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Hooked – Nir Eyal
Another must read behavioural psychology of product book that defines the yin to the yang of flow states. Eyal describes a ‘hook’ cycle that at its core drives repetitive behaviours like the endless scrolling of a news feed. The simple trick? Random rewards for an action, and it’s arguably the reason why when you scroll through Instagram it’s not in date order (remember that?). As product people we all need to understand this powerful technique, and then also apply ethical considerations to treat people as people not just ‘levers that move engagement metrics’. Arguably this is the approach that as of the early 2020s has engendered more political divide around the world than anything else, so very important to understand.
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Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love – Marty Cagan
Although a lot of this book can be read at Marty’s excellent SVPG site, if you’re a fan of dead trees (or Kindle power usage) this is a solid introduction to all his insights into product management, from process to teams.
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Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky
Although in places a bit dated, the core descriptions of how groups come together to interact and create change is still relevant.
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101 Things I Learnt at Architecture School – Matthew Frederick
Other subject areas and disciplines are often great sources of inspiration, both for product creation and process. Architecture has always been an interest of mine, and this book has some great little nuggets to help you think differently and a helpful reminder to always be prototyping.
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Steal Like an Artist – Austin Kleon
An easily digestible book full of great tips on the creative process.
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It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be – Paul Arden
Focussed somewhat on the field of advertising, this is a great book to dip into and feel more inspired about taking ownership and creating new ideas.
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