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The Open Source Product Manager
A product manager’s bookshelf
The books which have made a meaningful contribution to my thinking as a product manager.
Published in
6 min readNov 14, 2019
As a product manager, reading is one of the most productive development activities out there. It helps broaden your perspective, discover different ways of working and allows you to see problems in a new light. I generally try to read a few books a month, and I find they often fall into three categories:
- Table reference — books I will reread (in part or full) or find myself referencing back to frequently
- Happy on the bookshelf — books I enjoyed, found useful or which have contributed something to my thinking
- Hidden in the garage — books which didn’t live up to their hype / I didn’t enjoy or find useful / Would have been better as a blog post / Were poorly written / Didn’t translate well to product management (delete as applicable)
What follows is most of the category 1 and 2 books I’ve read over the past couple of years. I’ve broadly grouped them into the core capabilities of product management and have dropped a ⭐ next to any book I highly recommend — check these out first if you don’t know where to start.
