Finding good material about software product management used to be pretty hard.
I put this reading list together as an internal Spotify document in 2017, and often shared it with folks that expressed an interest in product management. At some point I made a public version, and it’s mostly been collecting dust in my Google Drive since then.
For my PM peers, maybe it’ll be a fun, nostalgic throwback to the stuff we used to share and emulate.
For those of you that are trying to break into a PM career right now, it hopefully provides some old but timeless insights.
Product management in general
- “Product strategy means saying no”
- “Good product manager, bad product manager”
- “The modern day ‘Good product manager, bad product manager’”
- “The role of a product manager”
- Steve Sinofsky’s reply to “The role of a product manager” (above)
- “Growth hacking is bullshit”
- “A dozen lessons on growth”
- “Shipping vs learning”
- “We don’t sell saddles here”
- “How to think about Bets, Success Metrics, and Roadmapping”
- Product Manager HQ weekly reads (article curation)
- Prioritized by Mind the product (article curation)
Strategy
- “The 666 roadmap”
- “10x not 10%”
- “Opportunity solution trees”
- “Foresight primer”
- “The three phases of consumer products”
- “Mental models I find repeatedly useful”
- Stratechery by Ben Thompson (industry analysis)
- This Steven Sinofsky tweet storm about Apple (“conversation #37”)
Helping engineers be effective
- “Resource efficiency vs flow efficiency” (read parts 2-4 as well)
- How to keep engineers out of meeting hell – More Than Coding
Data and analysis
- Learn SQL if you don’t already know it. It’s not required but will save you countless hours and help get you into “flow” when doing analysis. This isn’t possible if you’re relying on another person to run your queries.
UX/Design
- 5 Psychological Principles of Persuasive Product Design by Nathalie Nahai
- Sam Hulick’s onboarding teardowns (go through all of them!)
- “Send me problems, not wireframes”
Managing yourself
- “Can deep work really work for you?”
- “Maker’s schedule, manager’s schedule”
- “Manage your energy, not your time”
- “The 1% of career advice that’s actually useful”
- “I’m an impostor”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
Managing and leading others
- “A manager’s manifesto”
- “Average Manager, Great Manager”
- “Meetings”
- “Meetings that don’t suck”
- “Radical candor”
- “Leading cross-functional teams”
- Boss Level podcast (interviews)
Writing and speaking
- “Bad Managers Talk, Good Managers Write”
- “On Writing”
- “Write like you talk”
- “The three things I’ve learned from 18 years of public speaking”
- “Writing and speaking”
- Twitter thread re: Amazon writing culture
- The 72 Rules of Commercial Storytelling