#pm_library: “Inspired”

Today I would like to share my review of the book “Inspired” by Marty Cagan. Honestly, I warn you — it is more of a tribute to this book than a classic review.

This is the best, most complete book I have read about the role of Product Manager—a total of 10/10.

I appreciate this book because 5 minutes after I finished listening to this book on Audible, I ordered the paper version. I want to have this book on the shelf because I already know that I will be tossing it to my teammates and other PMs. What’s more, I already know that I will come back to it myself every time I feel stuck on my way to creating great products.

It’s great that Marty tries to direct the book to all Product Managers, regardless of whether they work in a Startup, Scale Up, or large corporation. The author recognizes the differences in work in these organizations and provides various tips for Product Managers in each environment.

As is often the case in other books about Product Management, the book does not focus on one aspect of PM’s work, e.g., only delivery or only the business context. The entire broad, complex spectrum of the Product Manager’s work has been presented here. That’s good because this is probably the biggest challenge for PMs, and it’s easy to get lost there. On the one hand, Marty guides us on dealing with this complexity. But also, he is honest and proves to readers that being a PM is a stressful, demanding, hard, responsible job. And for sure, not everyone can be a PM.

I also love a part of the book with a description of the roles in the product team. Also, Marty present relations between PM and designer, developers, delivery manager, product marketing manager, etc.

In the book, we find a lot of fantastic techniques that can be used to increase the commitment of the product team, product discovery, and communication with stakeholders.

Marty Cagan mercilessly scores mistakes, both those committed at the level of entire organizations (even those companies that seem to have an established position on the market), and mistakes made by Product Managers themselves. Such pointing out is often painful because we return to errors made by ourselves. Fortunately, we have a lot of advice in this book on avoiding them in the future.

One more cool thing at the end. I mean the way the author exposes women in Product Management. Even on the linguistic level, when the author describes the work of Product Managers, he uses the pronoun “she” rather than “he.” In addition, all of the fantastic Product Managers’ profiles featured in Inspired are women. Thanks also for that, Marty!