Whilst working in Product at Google and DeepMind I collected book recommendations from the best product managers and compiled the ultimate reading list.
Whether you’re a seasoned PM or just starting out, these 20 books are your roadmap to becoming a better product leader. Each one carefully chosen for both insight density and clarity. I’ve personally read and summarised more than 100 Product Management books, and I believe these to be the best. Enjoy…
Escaping the Build Trap Summary Amazon
Escaping the Build Trap is a top 10 product book — there aren’t many better. It gets to the heart of what’s important about product management and how you can practically do it inside a large company.
The ‘Build Trap’ is when product teams forget what drives value and they focus on (and celebrate) shipping features instead. They measure success based on outputs — not outcomes.
Project management culture infiltrating into product teams is a common mistake. Productivity metrics become more important than product metrics. Shipping becomes more important than solving problems.
To escape the build trap you need to understand and apply problem-solving and experimentation techniques throughout your product teams. You need to understand your goal and everything you do needs to be in service of it. You need to identify metrics that enable you to measure progress — and build a culture centred around learning.
Continuous Discovery Habits Summary Amazon
Teressa Torress is a household name in the Product community, and this might be the most influential product book written for a decade. It became an instant classic with Product Managers for good reason.
I suspect it resonated with PMs because so many product teams struggle to do product discovery well. Teressa made it seem easy.
Once you’ve mapped your opportunity space as a tree, prioritisation and research become easier. You’ll be able to systematically identify the most important thing to do next (research, experiment or build).
Meeting customers regularly increases your both the quality and quantity of insight, and helps you navigate your opportunity space.
There’s a ton of value in this book, so I recommend reading it in full.
