This list is far from all-inclusive. I’ve left out entire categories and capabilities that are critical to being a great PM (e.g. measurement, analytics). But some essentials are here. It’s a list I maintain for myself as a reminder to go back and re-read some of these things from time to time. Hopefully you find some of these writings as useful as I do.
Product Management
- Good PM / Bad PM — Ben Horowitz
- Let’s Talk About Product Management — Josh Elman
- Building Products — Julie Zhuo
- A Product Manager’s Job — Josh Elman
- On Writing Product Specs — Gaurav Oberoi
- Long Roadmaps — Fred Wilson
- What’s the Atomic Unit of Your Product/Service — Fred Wilson
- The Role of a Product Manager — Steven Sinofsky
- Why Software Sucks — Scott Berkun
- Software Inventory — Joes Spolsky
- Leading Without Coding — Aaron Schildkrout
- How to Write a Painless Product Requirements Document — Jerry Cao
- Creating an Environment for Creativity & Empowerment — Ben Chestnut
- How to Destroy Programmer Productivity — George Stocker
- How to Run a Problem-Solving Meeting — Seth Godin
- How to Build Great Products — Slav Akhmechet
- Product Strategy Means Saying No & Rarely Say Yes to Feature Requests — Intercom
- Four Questions Towards Understanding User Adoption of Your Product — Josh Elman
- Getting The Right Stuff Done — Steven Sinofsky
Design
- Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling Adapted for UX — ThoughtWorks
- The 8 Steps to Creating a Great Storyboard — Jake Knapp
- Simple or Minimal? — Tim Brown
- Too Much Choice — Bryce Roberts
- Empathy — Graham D Brown
- Great Design Isn’t About Making Things Pretty — First Round Review
- Don’t Listen to Your Users — Gillian Morris
- How We Know User Onboarding is Really About The First Session — Nandini Jammi
- Guide to SaaS Customer Onboarding — Ed Shelley
Miscellaneous Marketing/Business/Leadership
- Rules of Business — Stewart Butterfield
- Go-To-Market Best Practices for Startups — Mark Cranney, Jaimie Buss, Tom Butta, Mahesh Iyer (a16z)
- 16 Startup Metrics & 16 More Startup Metrics — Jeff Jordan, Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen (a16z)
- How to Design a Pitch Deck — Daniel Eckler
- Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule — Paul Graham
- Being a Leader, Not a Micromanaging Editor — Steven Sinofsky
- Want a Better Pitch? Watch This — Andy Raskin
- Our Startup Needed to Grow — Krista Anne
- How to Start a Movement — Derek Sivers
- Do Things that Don’t Scale — Paul Graham
- Startup = Growth — Paul Graham
- Management Cliches That Work — Steven Sinofsky
- Feet on the Street — Seth Godin
- 16 Product Things I learned at Imgur — Sam Gerstenzang
- 3 Ways to Improve Storytelling — Jerry Silfwer
- How to Price Something — Jason Fried
- Camels and Rubber Duckies — Joel Spolsky
- Sales Lessons From 13 Year Old Who Sold 22,000 Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies — Hunter Walk
- Defining a High Performance Team — Sarah Hui
- Building a Sales and Marketing Machine — David Skok
- 5 Reasons Your Team Gets Stuck with Inbound Marketing — Clement Vouillon
