Essential books for product managers
If you are new to the field or want to refresh your memory. These books can be read more than once.
Zero to One
Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters
Why read?
Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation.
224 pages, Currency 2014
Sense and Respond
How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously
by Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden
Why read?
This engaging and practical book provides the crucial new operational and management model to help you and your organization win in a world of continuous change.
272 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2017
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
by Ben Horowitz
Why read?
A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.
304 pages, HarperBusiness 2014
Meaningful
The Story of Ideas That Fly
by Bernadette Jiwa
Why read?
A must read for any entrepreneur or marketer. It’s full of lots of “aha” moments with a concrete tool that you can implement immediately.
176 pages, Perceptive Press 2015
Inspired
How To Create Products Customers Love
by Marty Cagan
Why read?
Why do some products make the leap to greatness while others do not? Creating inspiring products begins with discovering a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible. If you can not do this, then it’s not worth building anything.
242 pages, SVPG Press 2008
Product Leadership
How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams
by Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson & Nate Walkingshaw
Why read?
In this book, you get insights from 50 interviews of the world’s top product managers how to launch great products and build successful product teams.
248 pages, O’Reilly Media 2017
The Mythical Man-Month
Essays on Software Engineering
by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Why read?
With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects.
336 pages, Addison-Wesley Professional 1995
Intercom on Product Management
by Des Traynor & John Collins
Why read?
This book by the team at Intercom is designed to help those working in the ever-evolving field of product management.
88 pages, Intercom 2015
Hooked
How to Build Habit-Forming Products
by Nir Eyal & Ryan Hoover
Why read?
Do you wish your users couldn’t live without your product? Through a simple but powerful how-to guide Nir Eyal shows how to convert users that engage with a product into users who’ll return to it again and again. If you want to get a glimpse into the mind of users you should read this book.
256 pages, Portfolio 2014
Radical Candor
Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
by Kim Scott
Why read?
“Reading Radical Candor will help you build, lead, and inspire teams to do the best work of their lives.” (Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook)
272 pages, St. Martin’s Press 2017
The Laws of Simplicity
Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life
by John Maeda
Why read?
Ten laws of simplicity for business, technology, and design that teach us how to need less but get more.
117 pages, The MIT Press 2006
User Story Mapping
Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
by Jeff Patton & Peter Economy
Who Should Read This Book?
Product managers and user experience practitioners in commercial product companies should read this book to help them bridge the gap between thinking about whole products and user experience.
328 pages, O’Reilly Media 2014
Sprint
How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days
by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz
Why read?
New York Times bestseller Sprint takes you behind the scenes with some of America’s most fascinating startups.
288 pages, Simon & Schuster 2016
Escaping the Build Trap
How effective product management creates value
by Melissa Perri.
Why read?
Melissa Perri’s first book has the potential to become a real classic. In Escaping the Build Trap she focuses on the most common pitfalls Product Managers and companies fall into when releasing feature by feature instead of focusing on the customer’s needs.
In this book, Melissa — CEO of Product Labs and founder of the Product Institute — helps you to identify whether you are caught in the “build trap” and more importantly, gives you practical advice how to escape it. She brings together her year-long experience of building products and deep knowledge of how product-lead organisations work.
200 pages, O’Reilly Media 2018
The Design of Everyday Things
Revised and Expanded Edition
by Don Norman
Why read?
The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how — and why — some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.
368 pages, Basic Book 2013
Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman
Why read?
In this bestseller, Daniel Kahneman gives practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.
512 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2011
The Lean Startup
How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
by Eric Ries
Why read?
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
338 pages, Currency 2011
Don’t make me think
A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
by Steve Krug
What you will learn
Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on Web design and usability.
216 pages, New Riders 2014
The Product Manager Interview
164 Actual Questions and Answers
by Lewis C. Lin & Teng Lu
Why read?
The book contains fully solved solutions so readers can learn, improve and do their best at the PM interview.
300 pages, Impact Interview 2017
