40 Best Books for Product Managers

With a full visual guide

How to land a job in Product Management? How to build products that customers love? How to boost your PM career? There is no one size fits all solution. Getting into Product Management has many paths, from being an engineer, through consulting to project management. Recently, universities started to offer degrees in that field, but it’s still a minority. It’s not straightforward how to get into it. When you’re in, what differentiates the best product leaders from others?

There are many unanswered questions for PMs and If any of this sounds familiar to you — I recommend you to read. Many of the most successful leaders shared their tips, so you don’t have to discover everything on your own. In this article, you can find books for every moment in your career with a handy visual map to easily find a cure for your most pressing problem.

A visual guide to Product Management

Download a full-size map under this link

Most gifted books by category

Product leadership

• Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself by Wes Bush
• Product Mindset by Product School
• Ship It: Silicon Valley Product Managers Reveal All
  by Product School, Nathan Thomas, Gabriela Araujo, Roy Cobby
• Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams by Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson and Nate Walkingshow

Leadership

• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
• Turn the Ship Around: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L. David Marquet
• Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by Stanley McChrystal, Chris Fussell, Tantum Collins, David Silverman
• Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products by Marty Cagan, Chris Jones
• The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
  by Julie Zhuo
• The Team that Managed Itself: A Story of Leadership by Christina Wodtke

Building great products

• Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
• Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall
• Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
• Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers by Russell Brunson

Building great companies

• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by James C. Collins
• Why Digital Transformations Fail: The Surprising Disciplines of How to Take Off and Stay Ahead by Tony Saldanha
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras

Mastering lean toolkit

• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Brad Kowitz
• The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback by Dan Olsen
• Product-Led Onboarding: How to Turn New Users Into Lifelong Customers by Ramli John, Wes Bush
• Launch: The Roadmap to Product Management Success by Nathan Thomas, Roby Coby, Gabriela Araujo, Katya Evdokimova, Jorge Jiménez, Dan Zirkelbach

Mastering communication

• Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Malone Scott
• Non Violent Communication A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni

Extending PM toolkit

• Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty by C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan, Michael Connors
• The Jobs To Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs by Jim Kalbach, Micahel Tanamachi (Illustrator), Michael Schrage
• Epic alignment by Nils Janse
• User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product by Jeff Patton, Peter Economy

Measuring results

• Measure what matters by John E. Doerr

Getting the right mindset

• The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
• Rework by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Getting a job as a Product Manager

• Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology by Gayle Laakmann McDowell, Jackie Bavaro

Improving focus

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey, Jim Collins
• Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results by Christina Wodtke
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
• Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky

What are the best books for Product Managers in your opinion? What is the one book which you would recommend to other PMs?