Product Reading List

I often speak to people looking to make a move into Product; or those already in Product and looking to grow. Here’s a tidied-up version of a note I have with some of the key resources I tend to share with people after those conversations — I’ll try to keep it fairly up-to-date.

Note that I’ve kept this list focused on Product topics, but one key trait in great product people is curiosity; so whilst this list is hopefully a good starting point, it’s amazing the food-for-thought you can discover in a book that seems entirely unrelated, so go and explore.

Books to read

• The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
• Inspired — Marty Cagan
• Empowered — Marty Cagan
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt
• The Design of Everyday Things — Donald Norman
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention — Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings
• Creativity Inc — Ed Catmull
• Crossing the Chasm — Geoffrey Moore
• The Innovators Dilemma — Clayton Christensen
• Mythical Man Month — Frederick Brooks
• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories and Secrets from inside Amazon — Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking — Susan Cain
• Continuous Discovery Habits — Teresa Torres
• Trillion Dollar Coach
• The Coaching Habit
• The Making of a Manager

Newsletters

https://askgib.substack.com/

https://www.bringthedonuts.com/

First Round Review

Articles and other resources

Technical/Working with Engineers

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeYWWgYzz-w&t=6s
• https://review.firstround.com/The-one-cost-engineers-and-product-managers-dont-consider
• https://www.bringthedonuts.com/essays/how-to-work-with-software-engineers.html
• https://www.departmentofproduct.com/blog/technology-skills-product-managers/#:~:text=As%20a%20product%20manager%2C%20you,HTML%20and%20CSS%20is%20helpful.
• https://addyosmani.com/blog/software-engineering-soft-parts/

Metrics and Data

• https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/measuring-product-health-626b2186cece
• https://articles.sequoiacap.com/defining-product-success-metrics-and-goals

Planning and processes

• https://review.firstround.com/the-secret-to-a-great-planning-process-lessons-from-airbnb-and-eventbrite
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIBccpqUcgY
• https://www.mindtheproduct.com/bad-ideas-get-roadmap/

Building good products

• https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c59524d650d
• https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-tax-of-new-f777ec49f24a
• https://andrewchen.com/the-next-feature-fallacy-the-fallacy-that-the-next-new-feature-will-suddenly-make-people-use-your-product/
• http://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html

Product Strategy

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EQzoXBsktI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4H_gluZI10
• https://svpg.com/product-vision-vs-mission/
• https://hackernoon.com/wtf-is-a-strategy-bcaa3fda9a31
• https://askgib.substack.com/p/what-do-you-think-about-project-based?utm_source=url

Building teams

• https://jchyip.medium.com/why-its-difficult-to-build-teams-in-high-growth-organisations-e1aee8446337

The role of Product

• https://joshelman.medium.com/a-product-managers-job-63c09a43d0ec#.tyks72nz1
• https://a16z.com/2012/06/15/good-product-managerbad-product-manager/

Ways of Thinking

• https://fs.blog/mental-models/