Recommended Reading for 2023: Product + Process

I appreciate getting reading lists from others, so here are some of the books I’ve read in the last 12 months that I found helpful in the area of tech product development.

This post covers 5 good product and process books; in the next post I’ll share some that focus on remote work and leadership.

Product

Given my current role I’ve had to learn more about the GTM side of the business this year, and so I picked up Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products by Martina Lauchengco of SVPG. The only product marketing guidance I had been familiar with was the the Pragmatic Marketing framework, and most product marketers I’ve known have been self-taught, so I was happy to find a 2022 take from SVPG. This was a good starting point for me that frames the role of product marketing and also gives some helpful guidance on how to learn about the buyer’s journey, what kinds of interactions to have between sales, marketing, and product, and how to create a GTM strategy in an established company. Also some examples of good and bad OKRs and strategy text for marketing work. A great follow-on to Inspired.

Process

I have to start with Collaborating with the Enemy, by Adam Kahane. Kahane is an expert facilitator among groups who sometimes are literally at war with each other. He argues that the kind of wholehearted alignment we try for in everyday collaboration is not always possible, and how ‘stretch collaboration’ can help move a system in a positive direction even when people don’t share principles or like each other. His approach has a lot to offer to how I approach quarterly planning in organizations that are not well aligned. If you facilitate anything in companies bigger than 500 people, read this book.

If you’ve experienced the misery of teams that don’t know whether to focus on their OKRs, the roadmap, or a backlog, read Succeeding with OKRs in Agile by Allan Kelly. Kelly argues you’ve got to choose between these, and gives some great guidance on how to use OKRs in companies that aren’t ready to set stretch goals.

I don’t talk about Scrum anymore when I join teams, even though I co-taught CSM classes in the mid 00’s. Too many people have been burned by unsuccessful Scrum implementations. So how should teams figure out their process? Check out Amplio Development by Al Shalloway. Al offers a new method that starts with first principles and offers the beginnings of a pattern language. His ‘first principles’ remind me of Cockburn’s ‘properties’ from Crystal Clear. I’m experimenting with this now with my teams. Al is pretty abrasive on LinkedIn and the book is still unpolished, but if you’ve been looking for a modern development method that provides some structure without being a framework, this is worth a look.

I’ve always been fascinated by really big infrastructure projects and how they work, which is the focus of How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flybjerg and Dan Gardner. The authors give many interesting examples of successes and failures, including the Guggenheim in Bilbao (on time and budget and successful) and the Disney Concert Hall in LA (late and expensive but successful), both by Frank Gehry, an architect whose iterative process I’ve never really appreciated. The most predictable projects? Solar, wind, and roads. The most unpredictable? Big nuclear, nuclear waste, and IT. They advocate starting with slow, iterative design and planning followed by rapid execution, which somewhat ironically is what Winston Royce suggested (but everyone misunderstood) in the 70s for tech projects. But they also talk about how modularity is essential for scale, and how critical an experienced team is if you want predictable results.

Also check out the next post: 6 remote work and leadership books.