Being an avid reader of non-fiction I find that I tend to go through phases. Right now I’m racing through books that have anything to do with Disney Imagineering. Prior to that it was lean product development. Having just finished Four Steps to the Epiphany I thought I’d compile a list of what I found to be the best lean product management books I’ve read over the last year.

Four Steps to the Epiphany

This book is all about Steven Blank‘s concept of Customer Development. If you’re not familiar with Customer Development you should be. It’s very different than the traditional product development model. Where as most start-up founders start with the conviction that they know success looks like and just need VC money to build it, customer development starts with a hypothesis. It’s only once a hypothesis has been validated that you really start building.

The book covers much more than just product management but gives you a good idea of the role in a Customer Development start-up.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Inspired – How to Crate Products Customers Love

The book by Marty Cagan is much more focused on product management and interestingly enough, describes a process that’s very similar to Steve Blank’s Customer Development. It’s all about quick prototyping and listening to users – seems simple enough but goes much beyond that and gives you detailed action items. Like Four Steps of Epiphany, much of the suggestions in are counter to what you might have come to expect from start-ups today.

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love

The Back of the Napkin

Lean development means getting your idea across in simple ways. I can’t tell you how much trouble misunderstandings have caused me in my years of product development. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words but this book by Dan Roam goes beyond just making pretty pictures. It explains how to go about creating the most informative picture even if you don’t know how to draw.

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

This by no means is a new book, but having re-read it recently I can’t get away from how timely it still is. Everyone talks about viralitiy, social media, etc. but the fundamentals of marketing are still about positioning your product in the minds of users. As a product manager you need to understand this if not just for the fact that your products success is not entirely up to which features you build or do not build.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, 20th Anniversary Edition

Made to Stick

If it’s all about positioning then Made to Stick is a timely guide to do just that. It’s also more than just marketing, it’s message of simplicity goes much farther.

Consider it a great how to guide to finding simplicity. Products and processes can get very complicated, this book will help you take a step back and see what’s important.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Here Comes Everybody

Threw this in because I found it to be a book that makes you think about how the landscape is changing. It’s all about mass amateurization, something Clay Shirky introduced us to when he described how the world of publishing is changing.

Product managers should be familiar with the concepts in this book as they did social media a few years ago. Mass amateurization changes everything.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Honorable mention

If Eric Ries would ever write a book about his Lean Startup I’d have that up here too. I’ve seen him speak twice and am always interested in hearing more. His Lean Startup is almost a nuts and bolts approach to Customer Development and more. Luckily he’s running a workshop next month that I’m attending.