The most successful product managers are curious learners, and I hope this list helps you become just that! If you’ve got other suggestions, let me know.
Training
- Pragmatic Institute – Product certifications – Their certification classes are excellent and provide a broad view of product management. If you work with scrum teams, you’ll want to go deeper with a product owner certification, but this gives you an excellent, rapid introduction to product management and the full scope it entails.
- Scrum Alliance Product Owner – This training is valuable but provides a very narrow view of product management. I highly recommend you pair it with other resources on this page otherwise, you’ll have a very limited understanding of your role as a product manager.
- Google Analytics Academy – Feel free to swap this out with training on the analytics tool your company uses, but don’t skip analytics and data analysis training. It’s key to your success as a product manager.
Books
- Product Management
- Inspired by Marty Cagan – A great primer to product management.
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz – This book does sugarcoat how difficult it is to build great products but gives a frank accounting of the challenges (and opportunities) we face as product managers.
- Leadership
- Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products by Marty Cagan – An excellent look at leading and building great product teams.
- Product Discovery
- The Four Steps To The Epiphany by Steve Blank – The textbook on product discovery. It is a dense book, but well worth the read.
- The Lean Startup by Eric Reis – An in-depth look at product validation and iteration
- The Innovator’s Dilemma Series by Clay Christensen – The entire series is great, but the two best books are:
- Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by Clay Christensen – This book introduced many of us to the idea of “Jobs to be done.” Definitely a book you need to read soon after becoming a product manager. Check out the video below for a brief introduction.
- Business
- Predictably Irrational by Dr. Dan Ariely – This book explores how we make decisions and how irrationally we really are. I’ve included a video below which provides an overview of the topics covered in this book.
- Drive by Daniel Pink – This book looks at human motivation, and it might give you some new inspiration on how you can lead others. Check out the video below for a quick overview of the topic.
- Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson – How can a product be free?
- Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore – A framework for understanding the lifecycle of products (and the companies behind them).
- The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson – This book looks at how many industries have been changed by the opportunities presented in the long tail of products.
- Product Design / UX
- Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug – A classic introduction to usability.
Podcasts
Videos
While I highly recommend each of the books I linked above, especially as you’re getting started, you don’t have time to read them all. So I’ve included a few videos here which should get you started.