These are some of the books we mention in our workshops and coaching sessions.

On Products and Product Management

Look Beyond the Product: The business of agile product management by Steve Johnson of Under10 Playbook. Today’s agile development methods are great but don’t miss the forest for the trees. You still need a vision, a roadmap, and clarity of team roles to succeed. Look Beyond the Product explains what today’s executives need to know about agile development methods and the business of managing products.

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan is a good start for anyone planning to be a product manager. Cagan explains the challenges, the methods and approaches, and uses real-life examples to help drive his concepts.

The Product Manager's Desk Reference by Steven Haines. Need to do a competitive SWOT analysis? See page 166. Need a strategic plan? It's there too. Particularly for new product managers, this is the source for practical methods. You won't read this; it's not that kind of book. Instead, you'll keep it handy for when you need a template or method that's new to you.

The Practitioner's Guide to Product Management by Jock Busuttil. An excellent primer on product management at the intersection of business, technical, and market expertise.

On Lean and Agile

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries. This is the book that everyone is talking about: how to turn your idea into a business by testing every step of the way. Good product management principles in play here.

Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works by Ash Maurya offers a step-by-step approach to implementing Lean principles with your product.

The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback by Dan Olsen gives a practical set of tools for Lean implementation.

On Building Products Right

User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product by Jeff Patton. User story mapping is a valuable tool for software development. This book examines how this often misunderstood technique can help your team stay focused on users and their needs without getting lost in the enthusiasm for individual product features.

On Organizations and Teams

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business by Patrick Lencioni. One aspect of success that no one talks about is "organizational health." Trust and shared goals—on product teams and leadership teams—are the keys. If you're in a dysfunctional organization, this book provides some great insights.

The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management by Tom DeMarco. Imagine a management book wrapped in a novel. Our hero has been kidnapped to run a software venture, with too many resources. What to do? Run a series of experiments with teams that are too small and too large to see which are most productive. This is a fun read for product managers, development managers, and people managers.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Implementing change in your organization? You need to understand the three forces of change: the driver; the elephant, and the path. (Don’t worry; it makes sense in the book).

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull is a great book of managing, particularly on managing creative people and projects.