Cauvin

Great product management requires a combination of learning, leadership, facilitation, and strategy skills.  To gain and maintain proficiency, new and experienced product managers alike can benefit from reading books on these topics.  My product management bookshelf includes a number of texts that never cease to benefit me.  I find myself referring back to the books to refresh my skills, rekindle my product management passions, and cite interesting passages to friends and colleagues. Here are some of the top books I recommend product managers read.  The books I'm listing aren't books on product management per se , but they cover skills essential for effective product management.  If you're an executive overseeing a product management or product team, consider buying these books for the team's product management bookshelf. 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk Al Ries and Jack Trout Follow @lauraries This classic book enumerat...

Does your company suffer from product paralysis? Product paralysis occurs when progress halts on improving or innovating a product. At some point, you've probably experienced: A product team can't agree on major product decisions, so they concentrate on minor bug fixes and enhancements that have little or no market impact. Bold product decisions are made (often by members of the team that just happen to wield the most influence at the time), but the decisions come under fire and are put on hold shortly thereafter. Team members don't buy into product decisions, so they undermine them, stall their execution, or just aren't motivated to be productive in executing them. The most effective product managers - to the extent that company executives empower them to do so - employ three approaches to prevent product paralysis: Base product decisions on market understanding and marketing principles . Teams will not buy in to major product decisions unless they can make a compe...