Product Management Articles and Books
I frequently get asked if there are any articles that I can recommend to someone thinking about going into Product Management. Here’s a very comprehensive list of articles and books that I maintain.
Level 0 - What is Product Management?
- A Product Manager’s Job - Josh Elman
- Product Managers: Who are these ‘mini-CEOs’? - Ken Yeung
- What exactly is a Product Manager? - Martin Eriksonn
- What is Product Management? / Slideshare version - Sachin Rekhi
- PM at Microsoft - Steven Sinofsky
- Product Manager You Are… - Mat Balez
- What Product Management is Not - Marty Cagan
- Does the world need Product Managers any more - Multiple authors
- Product Management vs. Product Marketing - Marty Cagan
- Evolution of the Product Manager - Ellen Chisa
- Use your Product Powers for Good - Bruce McCarthy
- The Black Box of Product Management - Brandon Chu
Level 1 - Is it really for you?
- How to hire a Product Manager - Kenneth Norton
- The DNA of Product Management - Hunter Walk
- The Dark Side of PM - Ellen Chisa
- Do I need to be technical to be a PM - Ellen Chisa
- Ode to a Non Technical Product Manager - Hunter Walk
- Should nice people be Product Managers - Alex Pukinskis
- 3 Skillsets for PM Success - Kenton Kivetsu
Level 2 - Becoming a Product Manager
- How do I become a Product Manager? - Multiple authors
- How I became a PM - Ellen Chisa
- Do Product Managers really need a background in CS - Jackie Bavaro
- Want to be a PM? Do a Project - Ellen Chisa
- So You Want to Manage a Product - Rohini Viba
- The 4 ways to break into Product Management - Jackie Bavaro
- 12 things Product Managers should do in their first 30 Days at a new company - Kenneth Norton
- 4 mistakes new Product Managers make - Matt Schnitt
- Evolution of the Product Manager - Ellen Chisa
- Starting and maintaining a career in Product Management - [Notes]
- Cracking the PM Interview [Book]
- PM Interview Questions - [Notes]
Level 3 - Building great products
- Inspired - How to Create Products Customers Love - Marty Cagan - [Book]
- How to build great products - Slava Akhmechet
- Make things as simple as possible but not simpler - Adam Nash
- 10 essential steps to create products that customer love - Laurence McCahill
- The power of the perfect slice - Alastair Lee
- Ten principles on the journey to building great products - Avid Larizadeh
- Quality is not a tradeoff - Julie Zhuo
- How to build products users love - Kevin Hale
Level 4 - Get out of the building
- The 4 steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank - [Book]
- Listen to customers - Kenneth Norton
- Beginning Customer Development - Kevin Dewalt - [Ebook]
- How do Customer Development and Product Management fit together - Cindy Alvarez
- How to structure and get the most out of customer development interviews - Jason Evanish
- The customer is always right. Except when they aren’t - Wade Foster
- Your MVP is about discovery not product - Kevin Dewalt
- 12 things about product-market-fit - Tren Griffin
Level 5 - Requirements!
- Painless functional specifications - Joel Spolsky
- Inspired - How to Create Products Customers Love - Marty Cagan - [Book]
- Requirements are not - Marty Cagan
- Feed the beast - Marty Cagan
- The end of requirements - Marty Cagan
Level 6 - Roadmaps, planning and prioritization!
- The seven deadly sins of product planning - Marty Cagan
- Product strategy means saying no - Des Traynor
- Product priorities start with strategic goals - Bruce McCarthy
- You don’t need a product roadmap - David Heinemeier Hansson
- The inconvenient truth about product - Marty Cagan
- The opportunity backlog - Marty Cagan
- The dirty dozen roadmap roadblocks - Bruce McCarthy
- The pyramid model & what it means for PM focus - Kenton Kivetsu
- How am I going to move my product forward today - Sachin Rekhi
- Don’t publish a product roadmap - Colin Rand
- Software Inventory - Joel Spolsky
- Babe Ruth and feature lists - Kenneth Norton
- What are the best ways to prioritize a list of product features - Ian McAllister
- Before you plan your product roadmap - Des Traynor
- Rodmaps focus on vision benefits, not features - Bruce McCarthy
- The one cost engineers and Product Managers don’t consider - Kris Gale
- Guide to Product Planning: Three Feature Buckets - Adam Nash
- Product hierarchy of needs - Tim Fletcher
- Magical thinking and the zero-sum roadmap - Rich Mironov
- Drop feature-based product roadmaps - Teresa Torres
Level 7 - Working with engineers
- The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy) - Nicholas C. Zakas
- The ten project management commandments - Slava Akhmechet
- 5 things Product Managers wish they could tell developers - Brandon Satrom
- How to work with PMs - Julie Zhuo
- How to work with engineers - Julie Zhuo
- How to work with software engineers - Kenneth Norton
- The Iceberg Secret, revealed - Joel Spolsky
- Leading cross-functional teams - Kenneth Norton
- Engineers: So your PM sucks? Here’s how to fix it. - Ellen Chisa
- Nerds, get the Product Management you deserve - Jeff Enderwick
- The product manager’s lament - Eric Ries
- Joel on Software - Joel Spolsky - [Book]
- Peopleware - Tom DeMarco - [Book]
- Team Geek - Brian Fitzpatrick - [Book]
Level 8 - UX and working with designers
- How to work with designers - Julie Zhuo
Level 9 - Giving and receiving feedback
- You won’t regret positive feedback - Zack Holman
- Thirty percent feedback - Jason Freedman
- How to run a design critique - Scott Berkun
Level 10 - Ship, Measure and Win
- Shipping is a feature - Steven Sinofsky
- Great product leaders win games - Adam Nash
- How to deliver more software projects on time - Mark Suster
- Always be defining success - Jackie Bavaro
- The only metric that matters - Josh Elman
- The blind Product Manager - Paul Adams
- Shipping beats perfection explained - Ben Kamens
- Measure twice, cut once - Rick Klau
- The lost art of the soft launch - Wade Foster
- The Mythical Man-Month - Frederick Brooks - [Book]
Level 11 - Organizing a Product Management team
- Enter the Matrix - Organizing Product Management - Mark Tattersall
- Product organizational structure - Marty Cagan
- Good product team, bad product team - Marty Cagan
- The best Product Management model - Marty Cagan
Level 12 - Managing Up
- Managing Up - Marty Cagan - [Notes]
- Top hacks from a PM behind two of tech’s hottest products - Todd Jackson
- Stakeholder Management - Marty Cagan
- Court scribe or Hand of the King - Bruce McCarthy
- Influence without authority - Sachin Rekhi
- Management clichés that work - Steven Sinofsky
- How to be persuasive - Jackie Bavaro
- Bad Managers Talk, Good Managers Write - Walter Chen
Level 13 - Becoming great
- Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager - Ben Horowitz
- Be a great product leader - Adam Nash
- Top 10 product leadership lessons - Adam Nash
- What distinguishes the top 1% of Product Managers from the top 10%? - Ian McAllister
- What makes someone a great Product Manager at Google? - Edward Ho
- What innate traits do great internet product leaders share? - Chris Wetherell
- Musings on Product Management - Mike Sukmanowsky
- Hiring a great product leader - Sutha Kamal
- What makes a great Product Manager? - Erik Torenberg
- How a football coach taught me to product manage like a boss - Mike Su
- How to hire a Product Manager - Kenneth Norton
If you have any suggestions or would like to see any added to the lists, send me a message on Twitter.