Best Product Management Books to Read

Product management is one of the most important sections within a business, impacting the company’s image and profitability. Product management is the intricate process of strategically planning each stage of a product’s creation. Starting with the research and development, the process compiles till the testing and positioning stage. The detailed approach ensures that the product fulfills user needs and the determined business objectives simultaneously.

In brief, a project manager thoroughly studies and analyzes a business, related technologies, target audience, and their needs to deliver an appropriate product. The intricacies of this process are most clearly depicted through leading product management books. Hence, we bring you a detailed list of the best product management books in 2022. 

• The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is about igniting the entrepreneur within you. It motivates the readers to understand the value of owning a start-up using product management skills. This book, written by an entrepreneur himself, is a guide to help you make better and faster business decisions. 

The Lean Startup covers various stories of successful entrepreneurs and analyzes their career paths. Further, it tells you how you can follow in the footsteps of those accomplished businessmen and put the customer at the center of all your product goals. Your product should be designed keeping in mind your target audience. It should add value to their life and be as adaptive as possible. Delivering the right type of product to your customers that enhances concrete value in their life is a struggle for almost every product manager. 

Thus, this guide is the solution for all aspiring or interested product managers to make their products successful. 

• The Product Book

Written by Carlos González de Villaumbrosia and Josh Anon, this book is the ultimate guide to becoming a successful product manager. It tells you everything an aspiring product manager would need to know. This is one of the good management books you must read at least once to strengthen your fundamental skills from A to Z. 

This amazon bestseller guides you through all the tough paths of your product management journey. It teaches you how to create exceptional products and then the strategies to market them. The specifics of this book offer professional insights enabling you to incorporate similarly innovative ideas into your winning strategy.

• Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore is one of the best product management books to teach ambitious professionals the market dynamics a product faces. It particularly focuses on the difference between the early and mainstream markets. 

This book offers ample knowledge that includes decision-making guidelines for investors, executives, marketers, and managers all over the high-tech community. It also includes several real-world examples of businesses that struggled in the chasm. 

While building a successful company, one faces numerous hurdles on the path. One major struggle is to make the customers adapt to the product. There, Moore suggests various techniques like choosing the target market, understanding the product, and building marketing strategies to cross the “chasm” and enhance its popularity among audiences. 

• The Making of a Manager

The book’s title by Julie Zhuo speaks for itself while extending the ultimate guide to being the best product manager. It teaches you about management skills, products, people, and the purpose you must serve as a product manager. It also discusses the balance of one’s focus on product and management. A manager shouldn’t just be concerned about the product but also about serving their duty as a ‘manager.’ 

After reading product management books like these, your skillset will be fueled with valuable insights you can utilize to create reliable products. Therefore, you must gain the leadership skills that the author suggests in this book to make an optimal product team.

• The Influential Product Manager

This is a new-age book by Ken Sandy comprising the core skills and behaviors one must have as a product manager in modern tech companies. This ultimate guide teaches you all, including the product manager’s behavior at each stage of the product life cycle. The best outcomes are just a book away!

The author is a 20-year veteran in the consumer industry and thus boils down some of his valuable experiences and complex topics into easy-to-understand and apply principles. Thai guidebook can be perceived to have come from the guide himself.

• Product Management’s Sacred Seven

Authored by three great product managers that served some of the world’s top companies, this book will give you insights that no other product management books can provide. It guides you to be the world-class product manager every company wishes to hire. Besides the authors with extensive experiences, it also includes interviews with 67 product leads to provide you with expert knowledge and applied skills. The uniqueness of this book lies in its approach to educating newcomers, as it gives detailed information about the different product management processes in different firms. The in-depth assessment of this book will help you improve your product management abilities. 

• Presentation Zen

Written by Garr Reynolds, this book is a step ahead of your basic management books. It focuses on your presentation skill, as launching a product without presenting it in front of stakeholders is inevitable. Thus, gaining persuasion skills and adding more insights to your arguments is of utmost importance. It will then add value to your presentation and will be perceived in the same way. 

Besides this, it motivates you to ignite the creativity within, as a presentation is nothing without creativity. Concepts such as sound design and Zen minimalism ideas can significantly fuel your management abilities. 

• Shape Up

Authored by Ryan Singer, the head of the strategy team at Basecamp, this book explains the different approaches Basecamp has established over the years while producing its successful products. 

Further, it suggests building the product first before setting a timeline for the same. It also teaches how to implement a well-delegated and effectively planned product management strategy. The book works as a practical toolbox containing expert methodologies and techniques aspiring managers can incorporate into their new projects. 

• Measure What Matters

This book comes from the legendary investor John Doerr, who was appointed to advise on fixing America’s economic downturn in 2009. Through this book, Doerr has narrated many first-person accounts and the driving factor behind his product expansion. In brief, it demonstrated the growth that OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) have spurred at big organizations like Google, Intel, and Amazon. This is a good product management book to comprehend innovative management methods in the technological industry. 

• Dare to Lead

Everyone needs the confidence to manage things well and prosper in their respective domains. Therefore, a guide that teaches you a more human and people-oriented approach is also essential in today’s world. By the end of this Brene Brown book, you will be equipped with all the effective leadership skills. It will also teach you how to make difficult decisions at the head of the department. 

All the product management books mentioned above offer unique insights into how product management skills can be improved using more analytically backed strategies. You can start with one of them and realize the value it adds to your professional career. These books collectively offer personal as well as professional growth recipes for becoming a better product manager. So, don’t wait and start your journey today!

Learn more about Product Management with upGrad

A good product manager knows how the right certification can nourish their career, offering them an edge over contending learners. upGrad’s Postgraduate Certificate in Product Management is one such certification course you can utilize further to strengthen your resume and skillset as a product manager.

This course offers you an expert-led curriculum, including skills such as product strategy, prototyping, product sense, collaboration, stakeholder management, and more. To carve the path to your success, upGrad further supports learners with access to 1:1 career coaching and mentoring. 

Along with the mentioned perks, you will also be guided to build your own product with hands-on experience with several tools, helping you to obtain lucrative market opportunities!