I often get asked advice on books for product managers to read, in order to further develop their skills. At some point, I thought it would be good to have such a list easily available; I’ve also extended it to books for product leaders too.
All of them are books for product managers I have read myself, and I’ve added a personal note on each of them. I am an avid book reader, and I’ll keep adding books as I go.
In each section, I opted for sorting the books starting from the most recent.
Product Management Essentials books
Teresa Torres. Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value. (2021)
A practical guide for product managers who want to move beyond periodic user research and adopt a cadence of weekly customer touchpoints, teaching you how to iteratively test assumptions, refine opportunities, and ensure your product decisions are grounded in real customer insights.
Michele Hansen. Deploy Empathy: A Practical Guide to Interviewing Customers. (2021)
The subtitle says it all. The best field guide to listening to customers.
Melissa Perri. Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value. (2018)
My go-to answer when asked what’s the first book on product management they should read. Melissa does an incredible job of explaining the fundamental shift from focusing on outputs to outcomes, showing how great product management is about creating real value for both customers and the business — making it the perfect starting point for anyone new to the field.
Tim Herbig. Lateral Leadership: a Practical Guide for Agile Product Managers. (2018)
Product Managers permanently live in this conundrum of responsibility without authority. Hence the lateral leadership: we need to take the helm of a ship of peers, not reports). Tim provides practical advice on how to get around this through strategic alignment and empathy, and wisely using conflict escalation.
Marty Cagan. INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, 2nd edition. (2017)
As for books for product managers, this one is simply mandatory. Often taken as a product management bible, it’s best used as a toolkit of frameworks. You won’t always be able to follow Marty’s advice literally, but there’s lot from where build your own path.
Clayton Christensen. Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice. (2016)
Competing Against Luck is essential for product managers because it teaches how to uncover the real struggles customers face and design products that address those core ‘jobs to be done.’ By focusing on compensating behaviors and avoiding the trap of prioritizing features over outcomes, it provides a framework for creating truly meaningful innovations that stand apart from competitors.
Jeff Patton. User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product. (2014)
User Story Mapping is a must-read for product managers because it transforms how you approach product discovery and delivery — helping you visualize the big picture, prioritize effectively, and ensure your team is always working on what truly delivers value to users.
Advanced Product Management books
Christina Wodtke. Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results, 2nd edition. (2021)
The book on OKRs, and the strongest influence on how I think and act about them. The only angle I respectfully disagree with is cascading them up to the individual level. First published in 2016, Christina’s book stood the test of time and made it to a 2nd edition. All the advice is practically applicable, even for early stage startups.
Randy Silver. What Do We Do Now?: A product manager’s guide to strategy in the time of crisis. (2020)
Randy wrote and published this one in the middle of the crisis: the boom of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a snappy and actionable read on (sudden) change management for product manager. Oh, and its proceeds go to charity!
A.G. Fafley and R.L. Martin. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. (2013)
Essential for product managers and leaders because it cuts through the fluff and breaks strategy into actionable choices (where to play, how to win) helping us avoid common traps like vague missions or trying to do everything, while staying laser-focused on delivering impact.
Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. (2011)
As we move in seniority, books for product managers must include strategy — not just product, but business strategy in general. Rumelt stresses that strategies need to be a specific and coherent set of actions towards a goal. By only having a vague vision and non-actionable goals, most companies have bad strategy, or no strategy at all.
Andy Grove. High Output Management. (1995)
The title doesn’t really do it justice, and I regret having postponed reading it because of that. For Andy, we should see “individual contributors who gather and disseminate … information” as middle managers; I see product managers in that definition. Key takeaways include:
- managers as value multipliers (not value added),
- the value of writing even if no one reads;
- delegating without abdicating;
- monitoring at the lowest-added-value stage of a process as a way to fail cheap;
- effective meetings (including which not to hold).
Success Stories
Uri Levine. Fall In Love With The Problem, Not The Solution. (2023)
From Waze co-founder. Every product leader should read this book because it reinforces the importance of understanding value creation and scaling thoughtfully, while offering practical insights on nailing product-market fit and optimizing for recurring revenue models. It’s a blueprint for balancing strategy with execution.
Tony Fadell. Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making. (2022)
Tony Fadell’s Build is a must-read for product leaders because it blends no-nonsense advice with deeply relatable stories about making tough calls, balancing long-term impact with immediate needs, and building teams and products that truly matter — all things we face every day as we try to create value in a messy, ever-changing environment.
Adjacent or Specific Product Management Skills
J. Craveiro. Platform Business Strategy: a Practical Guide for Busy Product Leaders. (2022)
Platform businesses are among the most successful companies of the past few years (think Uber, Facebook, Airbnb, or Amazon). This book is for founders, product managers and product leaders in platform businesses. When you finish the book, you’ll have crafted an essential vision and product strategy for your platform business and will be better equipped to “sell” platform thinking to your stakeholders and to dive into solid deeper references, like Platform Revolution (see below).
Kai-Fu Lee. AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, And The New World Order. (2018)
This book dissects an important competitive dynamic between China and “the western world” (most notably the US). With artificial intelligence at the centre, the book compares China’s and US’s different barriers and approaches to innovation. The author goes on to consider the impact of AI on society, and ponder on the role of universal basic income therein.
Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary. Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy. (2016)
I will spare my words: this is simply THE book on platform businesses, period. It was also the biggest influence on my own view on product strategy for platform businesses.
Chris Voss. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It. (2016)
What does hostage negotiation have in common with product management? A lot, especially if you have problems dealing with conflict.
Karen Berman and Joseph Knight. Financial Intelligence, Revised Edition (A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean). (2013)
Knowing how a company’s finances work, although not essential, can help you:
- make better decisions, and
- understand some decisions made around you.
I’ve read it a couple of times cover to cover, and sometimes come back to it for reference.
Public Speaking
Chris Anderson. TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking. (2016)
This book is a goldmine for product managers because it breaks down how to craft compelling narratives and communicate big ideas effectively. That is essential for inspiring your team, engaging stakeholders, and presenting a vision that resonates.
Scott Berkun. Confessions of a Public Speaker. (2009)
Scott Berkun’s book is a must-read for product managers because it blends practical tips with hilarious anecdotes, making it easier to tackle the anxiety of public speaking while teaching you how to confidently deliver clear, impactful messages in any setting.
(Product) Leadership books
Petra Wille. Strong Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers. (2021)
An incredibly practical guide for product leaders looking to develop their product managers, offering actionable tools like competency frameworks and coaching techniques to help identify strengths, close gaps, and empower your team to thrive in their roles.
Marty Cagan (with Chris Jones). EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products. (2020)
EMPOWERED is an eye-opener for product leaders who want to build teams that own their work and solve real problems, not just ship features. It’s a masterclass in coaching, aligning teams with strategy, and creating an environment where engineers, designers, and product folks are truly empowered to deliver extraordinary results.
Julie Zhuo. The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You. (2019)
If you see yourself managing PMs in the future, it’s a definite must-read. Otherwise, you’ll find useful lessons for:
- lateral leadership as an individual contributor,
- managing up (learning to “use” your manager), or
- coaching aspiring PMs without becoming a manager.
Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Team Topologies. (2019)
This book provides a model for organisation design around four fundamental types of software team topology. Although the model is arguably engineering-centric, it’s clear that these teams can be product teams. For that reason, it’s indispensable for any product leader who wants to co-design a product development organisation with their engineering leadership peers.
Camille Fournier. The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change. (2017)
This one clearly targets an audience of (to-be) engineering managers. However, it still provides lots of tips for PMs to work with them, and even help them in their journey.
Books on Culture and Working
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work. (2018)
I’ve actually read Make Time more or less at the same time as this one. I found It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work to provide more generalisable (hence useful) advice. Make Time felt too focused on specific techniques the authors use but fall flat as soon as your context differs from theirs. (This is more or less how I feel about David Allen’s Getting Things Done too).
Erin Meyer. The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Businesses. (2014)
In college, I learned about Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, and even then they sounded outdated. (Masculinity vs femininity? Really?) Erin’s book is a way more modern guide to interpersonal relationships and communication across cultures. It’s an essential soft skills book for product managers, especially if you work with remote / distributed teams. You shouldn’t used to stereotype cultures; you should instead use it to take a step back from your own culture’s biases.
Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. (2010)
Communicating with each other is what we most often need to do to be successful. Yet, we learn nothing about it in school/uni. While this is still the case, Difficult Conversations is essential for product leaders to bridge that gap and navigate high-stakes discussions (whether it’s aligning with stakeholders, giving tough feedback, or resolving conflicts within the team) by helping you approach them with clarity, empathy, and structure.
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