We have seen some drastic changes in business over the past two years as customer behaviours and market trends shift. With all these massive fluctuations, it’s important for Product Managers to stay on top of changing customer demands and continuously develop the skills necessary to build products users will love.
To help product leaders continue to upskill, we’ve put together a list of new and classic product books to help encourage growth in every aspect of your product career:
Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products by Marty Cagan
Author of the acclaimed books such as Inspired, is back and shares how all the big tech companies have been able to stay ahead of the curve and continuously innovate. It’s not just about finding great talent but also creating an environment conducive to making great products. This book will give you the tips you need to not only succeed but thrive as a leader.
Buy on Amazon
The Jobs To Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs by Jim Kalbach
We have seen that consumers are becoming extremely skilled at finding and consuming information. With consumers becoming more demanding, it’s imperative to focus on customer needs. In this book, you will learn how to turn market insights into action, and how to make offerings people want as well as make people want your offering.
Buy on Amazon
Cracking the PM Career: The Skills, Frameworks, and Practices to Become a Great Product Manager by Jackie Bavaro, Gayle Laakmann McDowell
This book provides a comprehensive look at the skills, frameworks, and practices necessary to succeed as a product manager. You will learn how to develop reliable frameworks that will improve your chances of shipping successful products and help you develop the foundation to begin experimenting, reflecting, and improving.
Buy on Amazon
Build What Matters: Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision-Led Product Management by Ben Foster
This book gives importance to the long-term value creation for the customer. You will learn the methodology for becoming a product-driven company and how to execute it. This book will show you how Vision-Led Product Management can help you achieve your company objectives by meeting both current and future customer needs.
Buy on Amazon
Strong Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers by Petra Wille
This book is for product leaders looking for advice on how to be certain that every product manager on your team lives up to their full potential. It will teach you how to make sure your product people are competent, empowered, and inspired.
Buy on Amazon
Product Direction: How to build successful products at scale with Strategy, Roadmaps, and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) by Nacho Bassino
A product leader plays an essential role in the creation of a great product. They need to identify the most crucial problems and opportunities in order to deliver the right solutions to satisfy customers while creating a sustainable business and align the company towards the same goals.
This book will give you the tools and techniques to create a Product Strategy, a Strategic Roadmap, and OKRs, taking care of how to navigate the critical links between each of them to achieve success at scale.
Buy on Amazon
When Coffee & Kale Compete: Become Great at Making Products People Will Buy by Alan Klement
The goal of this book is to help you build products that people want to buy, reduce waste within your organization, and help your company stay competitive. You will also learn how to analyze the competition and make customers notice your product. Using the knowledge from this book, you'll be able to boost growth for your product and business.
Buy on Amazon
The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback by Dan Olsen
This book covers practical product methodologies and provides a step-by-step guide and advice on building products that customers will love. It describes the Lean Product Process, which is a repeatable and easy-to-follow method for achieving product-market fit.
Buy on Amazon
Hooked by Nir Eyal
This book will be your guide to creating better products. The author explains why many successful companies have incorporated the "Hook Model", a four-step process woven into their products to subtly encourage customer behaviour. You will gain practical insights to create user habits that stick and learn steps to build products people love.
Buy on Amazon
Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
This book has established itself as the primary reference for technology product managers. It discusses how to build a dynamic and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver products that will do well for your business and your customers.