On My Shelf with Gorka Ordeñana — Senior Product Manager at Rakuten TV (Madrid)
About
Hi, I am Gorka. I have been helping teams build video products since a decade and somewhere along the way I started wearing the one-million hats a product manager has (apologies for the trite hat metaphor). The Cagans, Rieses, Perris, Erikssons, Normans… that are already part of the PM library have been my companions in that journey so I will try to bring a few new additions to the collection.
On my shelf
North Star Playbook
by Amplitude
My opinion
The guys from Amplitude have recently shared the foundations of a product development framework that will, borrowing their own words, drive lots of meaningful conversations “about beliefs and assumptions, strategy and value exchanges, users and customers, inputs and outputs, leading and lagging, your game and your bets. In these conversations you’ll discover what matters to teammates, customers, and business — and as a result, you’ll make better products”. 100% agree.
I also like coming back to the series of essays on strategy by Gibson Biddle from time to time when thinking about the essentials: check it out.
Lean Inception
How to align people and build the right product
by Paulo Caroli
My opinion
A few weeks ago I was trying to find a way to structure the conversation around the discovery of a MVP for a cross-functional monster feature and I came across Paulo Caroli’s book. Similar to a design sprint, the Lean Inception process suggests a series of activities that will guide your team from the initial step of writing the product vision on Monday to mapping the solution on a MVP canvas on Friday morning. Don’t forget the beers on Friday afternoon!
182 pages, Editora Caroli 2018
Get this book (Amazon.com), (Amazon.de)
Sneek-peek here
Pencil Me In
How to align people and build the right product
by Christina Wodtke
My opinion
Like Teresa Torres says you have to draw more. “Pencil Me In” helps us, those who are terrible at drawing, overcome the fear of the blank whiteboard. “Mapping Experiences” by Jim Kalbach is a great book to find some inspiration too.
“Get this excellent book to become a master communicator. Create clearer and simpler messages with words & visuals.“
— Alex Osterwalder
168 pages, Boxes & Arrows 2017
Lean Enterprise
How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale
by Jez Humble, Joan Molesky & Barry O’Reilly
My opinion
I see this book as a little big encyclopaedia that delivers a complete vision about the principles that guide the praxis of the high-performing organizations who are capable of learning quickly by means of continuous improvement and experimentation. The go-to book for all the things lean at scale: it pictures the complete journey from the mission definition to the daily engineering practices. If you want to focus on the delivery phase grab “Continuous Delivery: Reliable software releases through build, test, and deployment automation” by Jez Humble & David Farley.
352 pages, O’Reilly Media 2015
Hacking Growth
How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
by Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown
My opinion
For those who, like me, don’t have a background in growth this book works perfectly as a primer. It has two parts: in the first one, the authors describe the set up of a growth team and process; in the second one, they flesh out the concept with a bunch of tactics and stories about many companies and industries. Check out these two episodes from the a16z podcast too: episode 1 & episode 2.
P.S.: a few days ago I found this reflection by Tim O’Reilly on growth, sustainability and ultimately the ethical dimension of product development.
320 pages, Currency 2017
The PM Library series “On my shelf” features Product Leaders from all over the world who are passionate about reading and sharing with the community. If you want to join the movement and share your reading list with others send us a message or fill out the following form. Let’s get better together 📚.
