Sure Product Consulting » Product Management Education

The Best Books on Product Management

Sue Raisty-Egami — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:30:07 +0000

On Quora, someone asked “What are some must-read books for product managers“? My answer is reproduced below, and is currently the leading answer on the topic, having been up-voted 10 times.

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For product managers working on high tech products and early technologies, the following are absolute must-reads:

Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore
Inside the Tornado, by Geoffrey Moore
Four Steps to the Epiphany, by Steven Blank

The following are not “absolute must-reads” but are very worthwhile:

The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries
Innovation Games, by Luke Hohmann
Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur
The Product Manager’s Desktop Reference, by Steven Haines
The Art of Product Management, by Rich Mironov
Dealing with Darwin, by Geoffrey Moore

I’ve read (or attempted to read) about every book on the market with the words “Product Management” or “Product Manager” in the title, and I would only recommend the ones listed above for high-tech product managers.

Many of the other books on Product Management are either 1) too broad, covering the gamut of banking products, consumer goods, automobiles, as well as high tech, 2) poorly written, or 3) perfectly fine and covering the same topics as the books I already listed, but not not as well.

I’d also recommend reading the essay “Good Product Manager / Bad Product Manager” by Ben Horowitz and David Weiden (yes, THAT Ben Horowitz. He wrote this piece over a decade ago when he was a Director of Product Manager at Netscape).

Webinar Recording: Five Common Challenges for Product Managers in Agile Team

Sue Raisty-Egami — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:18:40 +0000

I am much delinquent in posting this, but check out the recording from the webinar, Five Common Challenges for Product Managers in Agile Teams, given by Steve Johnson and me on May 22, 2009.

You can hear/view it on Pragmatic Marketing’s website, or on iTunes. Or, just check out the slides here.

It was really fun to work with Pragmatic Marketing and the super-funny Steve Johnson on this. And I’ve really enjoyed chatting with some of the listeners in the aftermath of the webinar.

I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments!

Join us! Free webinar on Agile Product Management, 5/22

Sue Raisty-Egami — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:08:11 +0000

On May 22 at 10am PST, I’m giving a webinar with the always-hilarious Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing.

The topic? Agile Product Management and “Five Common Challenges” organizations face when transitioning from a waterfall software development model to an Agile model.

Here’s the official blurb (also on Pragmatic Marketing’s website):

Agile is all the rage – developers are using it to deliver products more quickly and more reliably. But many organizations will find that their initial success with Agile is unsustainable unless they address how Agile impacts the rest of the organization, including product management. In this webinar, Sue and Steve will discuss five common challenges faced by newly “agilized” organizations and will propose solutions.

Interested? Sign up here: Five Common Challenges for Product Managers in Agile Teams.

P-Camp Presentation: Charm School for Product Managers

Sue Raisty-Egami — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:53:05 +0000

I’ve been quite remiss in posting my slides from my “Charm School for Product Managers” presentation that I gave at P-Camp Silicon Valley. Sorry about the delay.

In the session, we had a great discussion about how to handle sticky situations product managers find themselves in every day. One example: how to handle a customer who demands a definitive release date and feature list when it is too early for you to know. Another situation: dealing with situations when Sales has misrepresented the product to the customer.

Thanks to Enthiosys for putting on such a great event. I met a lot of great product managers and product marketers at P-Camp Silicon Valley – over 350 were in attendance! Looking forward to the next one…

Sure Product Consulting is sponsoring “P-Camp Unconference for Product Managers”

Sue Raisty-Egami — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 01:11:57 +0000

Sure Product Consulting is proud to sponsor the “Second Annual P-Camp Unconference for Product Managers.” There are two great things about P-Camp:

It’s FREE
It’s chock-full of education, networking, and learning about software product management best practices from your peers and product managment thought leaders.

Here’s the official blurb:

Join more than 300 friends, colleagues and perfect strangers at the second annual Silicon Valley P-Camp Unconference for product managers.

What is P-Camp?

The world’s largest free get-together of product managers. Based on the successful BarCamp and Open Space formats, it is an intense ad hoc gathering of product folks to share, present, network, learn, laugh and discuss. Much of the agenda will be created by you on the morning of the event, so bring ideas for discussions that you want to participate in.

When: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 9AM to 4PM

Where: Yahoo! headquarters, Building C, 701 First St, Sunnyvale

Cost: FREE! Includes lunch and a P-Camp t-shirt

Registration: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=168526

More information: http://www.enthiosys.com/news-events/pcamp09/

Volunteers and Sponsors: contact Sergey Gorbatov, sgorbatov@enthiosys.com

Partial list of proposed talks and panels so far:

Nancy Frishberg – Innovation Games session.
Erin Kinikin – “Working With Analysts” – panel
Chris Sims – “Agile 101″
Joy Montgomery – “If You Want to Hit the Deck Running, There Has to Be a Deck!”
Nils Davis – “What do you use for requirements management?”
Meghan Ede – Topics TBD
Jim Holland / Michael Hopkin – Market Sensing – a Case Study
Rich Mironov – “How Agile Changes The Way You Do Product Management”
Ross Mayfield -”Using Social Media and Wikis in Product Management” – panel
Mara Krieps / Linda Merrick -”Agile Product Management: The Rosetta Stone”
Catherine Connor – “Agile Product Management and CRM”
David Taber – “Design your customer before you design your product”
Luke Hohmann – “Shaping Your Products With Prune The Product Tree”