Valuable Books for the Product Folks vol.1

Written by those who actually did something that counts

• Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing - a very decent A/B testing book; while some of you might have serious issues with the traffic volume to apply it all, the approaches and key principles are of immense value. Especially for unregenerate Project Managers who like painting the Excel cells green :P

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness - frankly speaking, the title is a clickbait that turns ‘Burning Man’ into ‘Earning Man’ by someone who just compiled a list of Twitter posts; but the guy is a legend, that might be of value for those of you struggling with your place in this world like I was (I am).

• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - an Architect (yes, capital A) I know always says: “every morning our folks opening their company laptops should ask what they are paid for, they rarely do so”. Surprisingly, it ain’t about awareness, clicks, nice banners and videos (but don’t tell them that unless you are ready to make even more enemies). The book strips it down to the bone without all that “IT glitter” we swim in.

• The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right - some people just perseverate their mistakes over and over again (with releases, launches, plannings etc). So while we could agree that this book is somewhat populistic and cheesy, the checklists actually do the job if you have some repetitive tasks to be crossed out (I know you do).

• The Wright Brothers - I believe the best ideas come from reading about masters who’ve built this world. This short bio should be on your shelf as the Wrights took a serious part in our modern lives. Think of them every time you eat an avocado delivered from Mexico by air, that really puts it into perspective.

• Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed - Product Management is all about engineering an experience, that’s a liberating thought, even if some of us deal with the lousiest products ever invented.

• Kelly: More Than My Share of It All - same as above but with a panache. The two worked together for years. I came across those people thanks to Nickolas Means and his presentation here.

• Thinking in Systems - criminally unknown but very appreciated in certain circles. Goes along with Sterman’s writings & Senge’s “Fifth Discipline”.

TBC ;)