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Product Management and Marketing Books
Suggested reading for product managers and marketers
Books discussed in our seminars
E-Books from Pragmatic Marketing
The Secrets of Tuned In Leaders
Based on surveys spanning 3,000 companies, 45,000 individuals and one-on-one interviews with 30 technology CEOs, Pragmatic Marketing's Craig Stull, Phil Myers and David Meerman Scott found seven consistent success factors related to company culture, management style, and product & marketing strategies that propelled the winners. And also the seven fatal flaws that derail market laggards.
The Strategic Role of Product Management
Who in your organization is focused on next year and the one after, the next product, the next market?
Product management should play a strategic role in a technology company ensuring products are created not just because they can be, or because someone thinks it is a good idea but rather because someone in the company has listened to the market, identified an urgent and pervasive problem, and determined that people are willing to pay to solve it.
General product management and marketing
| Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs by Craig Stull, Phil Myers and David Meerman Scott Pragmatic Marketing has been teaching the principles of Tuned In for more than 15 years, with the Pragmatic Marketing Framework, helping companies find unresolved problems, create breakthrough experiences and launch market resonators. Tuned In is a simple, six step summary of these market-driven principles for discovering real and meaningful insight into any market. Read more... |
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| The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott David Meerman Scott introduces the new world of product marketing using new tools to direct-cast to those who are most interested: our buyers. Nowadays anyone with a Mac and a mic can create a podcast; anyone with a video camera can post on YouTube. And sending a news release to Google is now much more important than sending a news release to a journalist. Read more... |
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| Inspired by Marty Cagan In a series of essays, Inspired explains the basics of product management. What's the difference between product management and product marketing? What's the difference between product management and project management? What are personas and when do you use them? How does product management work in an agile environment? What is agile and what is waterfall? These questions and more are addressed in the book. |
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| Living on the Fault Line by Geoffrey A. Moore In "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado, " Geoff introduced new concepts for marketing high-tech products. This book, "Living on the Fault Line" shows us how to apply these concepts to a world that has embraced the internet. Applicable to both internet and traditional business, Moore shows us how we must create products that delight our customers, how to use stock price and market share as success indicators, and challenges us to outsource everything that is not a distinctive competence. |
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| Purple Cow by Seth Godin Is your product a purple cow? Or just yet another cow in boring black and white? Is your value proposition "more bland than the leading product"? if so, you need to read Purple Cow. Excerpted in "Fast Company, " the book sold out its first printing in three weeks. Godin's writing style is friendly and populated with clear examples from companies you'll recognize. He invites us to create remarkable products to delight a specific market--people who will love the product and tell their friends. Learn more at http://apurplecow.com (Note the "a" in the link. http://Purplecow.com is an unrelated but zany web site.) |
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Software Product Management Essentials by Alyssa Dver Software Product Management Essentials is a hands-on guide to help new product managers in small software companies sift through the numerous tasks and responsibilities involved in this job. The book is loaded with tips and example best practices to help even experienced product managers optimize their time and effectiveness. Based on proven methods and state-of-the-art processes, the book helps product managers prioritize the many tasks and issues that they confront. |
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| The Product Manager’s Handbook by Linda Gorchels The book is designed as an overview for product managers with some templates for regular tasks. |
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| From Idea to Launch at Internet Speed by Catherine Kitcho This book is a good read for any product manager that wants to take a methodological approach to bringing products to market while increasing their chances of success. Read more... |
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| Software Product Management by Dan Condone This book offers a hi-level overview of the relationships between the stake owners in product management--engineering, sales and marketing. The book's insights are good but don't expect practical guidelines such as "how to" and templates. This is an insightful book on product management that avoids delving into practical issues. Read more... |
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| Just Enough Requirements Management by Alan Mark Davis If you develop software without understanding the requirements, you're wasting your time. On the other hand, if a project spends too much time trying to understand the requirements, it will end up late and/or over-budget. Just Enough Requirements Management shows you how to discover, prune, and document requirements when you are subjected to tight schedule constraints. |
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Technology as a business
| In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 years of high-tech marketing disasters by Merrill "Rick" Chapman Since the beginning of the computing industry, technology companies have wondered about the value of marketing. This book explains the winners and losers in the context of marketing disasters. Rather than search for excellence, Chapman searches for explanations of how once high-flying companies fail. Positioning mistakes abound, as do mistakes resulting from executive and engineering arrogance. Using a combination of personal anecdotes and astute industry observation, Chapman proves he has been there. He shows us marketing and operational mistakes for companies like IBM, Apple, Lotus, and Novell, as well as almost forgotten MicroPro, Ashton-Tate, and Borland. Chapman has a clever and funny style, making the book very readable. |
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Selling Air by Dan Herchenroether A novel of sales engineers in technology, Selling Air follows two competitive sales teams and their travails of selling enterprise software. The "good team" under-commits and over-delivers; the "bad" sales guy makes promises that can't possibly be kept. And the customer assumes both vendors are made of the same cloth. Sales engineers and those who work with them will find this a terribly accurate portrayal of the state of vendors, sales people, and the sales engineers who make it all work. |
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| Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround by Louis V. Gerstner Jr. IBM has redefined itself as a force in the industry by refocusing on the customer. And it took a customer to show them how. Lou Gerstner describes the doldrums facing IBM during the 90s, when the press and the industry had written them off, and how the management team brought IBM back. An excellent read for anyone who has been in the business for a while, particularly in the enterprise space. The book is also an excellent book on how to run a business. Almost every page has a nugget of wisdom for running a better technology-based business. |
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| High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars by Charles H. Ferguson High Stakes, No Prisoners tells the story of FrontPage, its creation, growth, and ultimately sale to Microsoft. It serves as an excellent history of the internet boom, exploring the startup company's decisions and mistakes with great candor, sometimes too much candor. Anyone considering venturing out on their own should read this cautionary tale of interference by venture capitalists and misdeeds by potential partners, despite the technical excellence by the people who do the work. |
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| Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan In 1987, before the internet took off, pen computing was the "next big thing." Kaplan had the first viable pen-based product. Anyone considering a startup should read this first! |
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| All I Really Need to Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft by Julie Bick A former manager at Microsoft, Bick shares dozens of tips on working in a technology company including becoming an expert, managing your manager, and job interviewing with technology people. |
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| Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg In Dreaming in Code, author Scott Rosenberg follows a group of programmers tasked with creating a new product over a three-year stint. Along the way the book explores disciplines in development (and the lack of), the history of computing (particularly its truths and folklore), and explains why software engineering isn't a science but an art. A common misconception even among developers is that software is similar to construction when, as becomes clear in the book, developing software is more like cooking. Programming methodologies are as plentiful as cookbooks but both are limited by the realities of artistry. A chef can make miracles from a pantry full of ingredients; a cook cannot. |
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Tips & tools
| The PC Is Not a Typewriter: A Style Manual for Creating Professional-Level Type on Your Personal Computer by Robin Williams Schools continue to teach typing incorrectly. In the 21st century, a world of proportional typefaces, you never use two spaces between sentences. You never underline words; underline means "I can't make italics on this typewriter." The PC is not a Typewriter drills into kerning and fonts and is filled with many, many tips on creating professional documents using today's tools. |
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| The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams Uh oh, now you're doing brochures and letterhead and other design projects. This design books show various projects with before and after examples to illustrate the four key points of good design: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. |
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| The Non-Designer's Web Book: An Easy Guide to Creating, Designing, and Posting Your Own Web Site by Robin Williams And now we're making web sites... again without design skills. Williams uses her common sense to show you how to create a professional looking web site. |
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