On My Shelf with Nacho Bassino — CTO & CPO at Best Day (Cancún, Mexico)
About me
I’ve been leading product teams for 10 years. I’m passionate about both learning and sharing experiences. I enjoy being a speaker, coach, and trainer about product management whenever possible. I’m an active writer in Medium.
On my shelf
Good Strategy Bad Strategy
The Difference and Why It Matters
by Richard Rumelt
My opinion
With so much superficial material about strategy, this book truly gives you some insights on how to articulate a clear strategic path. If focuses on selecting the right opportunity and understanding the challenges that must be solved. Making a diagnosis, crafting guiding policies, selecting coherent actions is part of what Rumelt calls the “kernel”.
322 pages, Profile Books 2017
Get this book (amazon.com), (amazon.de)
Sense and Respond
How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously
by Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden
My opinion
This book provides a clear high-level picture of the modern product development process without the technical aspects of it and focusing on why the feedback loops that fill our methodologies are so important. I have found it particularly useful to share with non-product executives. It also has fun examples.
272 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2017
Get this book (amazon.com, amazon.de)
Culture by Design
by David J. Friedman
My opinion
Creating a solid product culture is really hard, but it is also imperative to thrive with autonomous and empowered product teams. While I would not take this as a step by step recipe, the book describes a useful process and artefacts that are concrete and applicable to almost any organization.
241 pages, High Performing Culture 2018
Get this book (amazon.com, amazon.de)
User Story Mapping
Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
by Jeff Patton & Peter Economy
My opinion
I read this book late in my career, considering that I have already learned story maps “on the field”, and the book would not add much value. While indeed, the story mapping activity is quite straightforward, the book covers a lot of the work “around” the maps that clarify the connections of the processes, especially between discovery and delivery. Besides, Jeff’s writing style is very entertaining.
324 pages, O’Reilly Media 2014
Get this book (amazon.com, amazon.de)
Accelerate
The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations
by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble & Gene Kim
My opinion
While many times the technical advice for PMs is “learn how to code”, I believe that an understanding of the tech practices that support delivery is sometimes more useful. While this book is not an explanation of those practices, it balances an approach both cultural and scientific to demonstrate the best practices used by the most successful tech organizations.
340 pages, IT Revolution Press 2018
Get this book (amazon.com), (amazon.de)
The Infinite Game
How Great Businesses Achieve Long-Lasting Success
by Simon Sinek
My opinion
I have not found a new concept in this book, but it is a short read that synthesizes very well a problem we struggle with when building products. We constantly deal with the short term and long term initiatives and their impact. While the book does not present a specific tool for PMs, I think it is a good thinking framework to add to our toolkit.
272 pages, Portfolio Penguin 2019
Get this book (amazon.com, amazon.de)
Our series “On my shelf” features product people from all over the world who are passionate about reading and sharing their best book recommendations with the community. If you want to join the movement and share your reading list with others send us a message. Let’s get better together 📚.
