My top Product Management books of 2020
This year’s list is shorter, but still great. These were the books that have taught me the most as a Product Manager in 2020:
The Lean Product Playbook
If in 2019 I’ve discovered INSPIRED —for me the book that best explains and maps the concepts of Product Management — , in 2020 I’ve found The Lean Product Playbook, the book which best teaches how to put Product Management fundamentals into practice.
The book goes through the process of building a product from start to “finish”— with focus on the prototype and MVP phases — while applying the lean and agile philosophy and giving concrete examples of how the author did it in his products.
A very practical book, that translates much of the theory into practice. A great one for both newcomers and those wanting to solidify their knowledge on techniques and processes.
Blue Ocean Strategy
Blue Ocean Strategy is one of those bibles, and which I’ve been postponing to read for ~10 years.
Maybe because, if we’re honest, the signal-to-noise ratio of many of these type of books is dead low.
But, even if I had to navigate through the mambo-jambo that the authors write just to reach the 250+ pages mark, Blue Ocean Strategy justified the fanfare around it:
This is a book about strategy which main idea is that, for companies to succeed, they should create their own new market (the blue ocean).
And this is done through specialization and differentiation, instead of applying a value-cost trade-off (common in high competing markets).
As I wrote here, I agree in part with this concept, and try to apply it to some extent in the products I work. Nonetheless, and naturally, things are much simpler in paper than in practice.
The School of Life: An Emotional Education
Being PM is not all about processes and techniques. Being PM is also about empathy, emotional toughness, being able to understand and communicate with each other, etc.
And consuming the content of School of Life (which I’m a big fan of) can teach us a lot about these aspects of our (personal and professional) lives.
Life is messy… our heads are messy...
But understanding that we all go through similar type of challenges, and that navigating through them is part of life, can give us some sort of tranquility with ourselves, and have a better understanding of others.
This, I believe, is fundamental for us to go through our personal and professional lives.
Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at maths; very little around their abilities at marriage or kindness.
Other Books I enjoyed very much
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I’m Daniel, passionate about building great digital products, with 8+ years of experience as Product Manager — from MVPs to Series A — and in building a great company from the start.
Paper Planes is the place where I reflect on my experiences and lessons on the craft of Product Management.
