Books on General PM Skills

Need real insight into customer problems and what your product needs to solve them? Get this book - it has lots of practical techniques for getting deep insights from customers and prospects, in a form that will make it obvious how you need to evolve your product.

As a product manager, you make tons of product demos - both internally and externally. You might as well learn to do them right!

Better be ready for the Agile/Scrum development methodology. Software dev organizations are moving to this model, quickly.

Want to learn to write user personas, and learn what your user experience guy is doing? Look here

Read the chapter on talking to customers, especially if you have to tell them disappointing news or have to ask them for favors... Also, helps you learn phrases to say "no", which as a product manager you will have to do frequently.

A classic. Explains why developing great software is so damn hard.

Please don't pay $80+ for this book. But if you find it in a used book store, snap it up. It will help you learn to organize your thinking and create compelling presentations and documents that convincingly persuade.

PMs always have way too much to do. This book helped the Cranky Product Manager get infinitely better at time management and handling an overwhelming number of action items.

Want to learn to write better? Then read and earnestly digest this book. It's short - it won't hurt too much, the Cranky Product Manager promises. This book will improve your writing immeasurably. For real

If you are transitioning to Product Management from development, you might not know much about what those Marketing folk do all day. Hint: it's not writing advertisements or cold-calling all day long. Well, this brief and easy-to-read book will tell you. A good introduction to what Marketing is, and what the Marketing function does all day.