Product Management in Practice

Appendix A. A Reading List for Expanding Your Product Management Practice

Given the connective nature of product management, drawing on multiple ideas and disciplines is key for truly excelling in this deeply cross-functional role. Product management always brings new challenges, and a wide base of knowledge will help you be better prepared for whatever comes your way.

To that end, I’ve found that the books and articles that have helped me the most as a product manager are rarely about “product management.” What follows is a list of the books that have proven most impactful for me in building my product management practice, as well as a few notes about what you might be looking for if this book is right for you, and how it helped me build my product management practice.

Influence Without Authority (Wiley, 2005) by David L. Bradford and Allan R. Cohen

If You’re Looking For: Strategies for leading through influence in low-authority roles and scenarios.

How It Helped Me: The content in this book is useful, but the in-depth case studies are really useful, and were the inspiration for the product manager stories included in this book.

The Trusted Advisor (Touchstone, 2011) by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford

If You’re Looking For: Actionable strategies for building trust with customers and senior stakeholders.

How It Helped Me: The Trusted Advisor is that most helpful kind of book, where the specific behaviors it recommends against are behaviors that ...