Books for New Product Managers

A first ninety days reading list, ordered so each book answers the question the last one raises.

If you have just moved into product, the difficulty is not a shortage of advice but knowing what to read first. This is a sequence rather than a pile. Each book answers a question the previous one leaves open, and the whole list is readable in a first few months without stopping the day job.

  1. Product Management in Practice

    Start here. Describes the job as it actually is, including the ambiguity, before you read the books describing how it should be.

  2. Inspired

    4.317 ratings

    What good looks like, so you have a reference point for the gap between your organisation and a strong one.

  3. The Mom Test

    4.01 rating

    The first practical skill to get right. You can apply it in your first week and it stops you gathering useless research.

  4. Outcomes Over Output

    Ninety pages on the distinction that everything else in the job hangs from. Read it in one sitting.

  5. User Story Mapping

    5.01 rating

    The bridge from what you learn to what the team actually builds, and how to keep a backlog comprehensible.

  6. Escaping the Build Trap

    By now you will recognise the pattern in your own company. This gives you the language and the argument for changing it.

  7. The Influential Product Manager

    The influence skills that decide whether any of the above lands, given you own an outcome but manage nobody.

  8. Swipe to Unlock

    4.02 ratings

    If you came from outside engineering, this fills the technical gaps in plain language without requiring you to code.

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