On My Shelf with Thomas Elliott — Product Manager at intuo.io (London, UK)
About me
I love products, their lifecycle, and how they influence society. Dropped out of a Ph.D. for the opportunity to be a Product Manager at Labstep and haven’t looked back. Currently, a PM at Unit4 building features to help managers drive performance and engagement in their teams.
On my shelf
INSPIRED
How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
by Marty Cagan
My opinion
I moved from a startup to a scale-up, to a large enterprise in a head-dizzying short period of time. This book has been extremely useful for helping me understand how I could bring the most value to the product manager role as the roles around me changed. A book filled with great actionable advice that I sometimes find myself quoting in my day-to-day.
368 pages, Wiley 2017
The Mom Test
How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
by Rob Fitzpatrick
My opinion
We’ve all been there…you’re convinced that this idea is the one and now you’re set on a path to convince everyone else. The blinkers have come on and you are ignoring any warning signs that this idea is a bad one, listening only to the compliments. This book helps remove these blinkers and see an idea for what it really is!
136 pages, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013
Sprint
How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
by Jake Knapp
My opinion
If a feature is becoming contentious or if I ever feel blocked in the product development process, this book is a treasure chest of tools to bring different stakeholders together and move things forward.
“Read this book and do what it says if you want to build better products faster.”
– Ev Williams, founder of Medium, Blogger, and Twitter
288 pages, Simon & Schuster 2016
Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse
My opinion
I believe one of the most important skills a product manager (or anyone in fact) can have is the ability to listen. This book taught me many things, but what it means to truly listen and feel empathy is the one that sticks with me the most. When talking to customers, it can be difficult to not think about what to say next or how to push an agenda before they have even finished speaking. This will lead you to falsely validating ideas and missing out on opportunities.
90 pages, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2015
R for Data Science
Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data
by Hadley Wickham & Garrett Grolemund
My opinion
Everyone knows how powerful data can be for building successful products. R is one of the best ways to explore and visualise your raw data. This book is a great introduction to a relatively accessible programming language.
520 pages, O’Reilly Media 2017
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 📚.
