Most product managers know what good practice looks like, but knowing and doing are two different things, and the gap between them is where most product work breaks down. The books below are the ones we come back to most often when working with product teams across European scale-ups, because they address the gaps that tend to cause the most damage.
1. Inspired by Marty Cagan
Every product team has, at some point, shipped something that nobody used. Inspired is Cagan's explanation of why it keeps happening and what the teams who avoid it do differently.
His central argument is that most organisations are structured for delivery, not for discovery, and that the two require fundamentally different ways of working. Teams that consistently build things people want are not smarter or better resourced: they have separated the work of figuring out what to build from the work of building it, and they take the first part as seriously as the second.
Cagan introduces the product trio: product managers, designers, and engineers working together as partners rather than in a handoff chain. He identifies four risks that every team needs to address before committing to a solution: value, usability, feasibility, and business viability.
If you want to start somewhere, start here!
2. The Build Trap by Melissa Perri
Where Inspired focuses on the craft of product management, The Build Trap focuses on the system around it. Perri's argument is that most organisations are trapped in a cycle of building more without measuring whether any of it works, and that this trap is usually structural rather than individual.
She shows how funding models, incentive systems, and leadership habits push teams back into project mode even when they intellectually understand outcome-driven product development. Teams get rewarded for shipping, so they ship. They don't get rewarded for learning, so they skip it.
The book introduces the concept of Product Kata, a structured habit of continuous improvement rooted in problem understanding rather than solution delivery. Perri also makes a strong case for why strategy needs to cascade clearly from business goals to product bets to team work, and what breaks down when it doesn't.
3. Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
Rumelt is not writing about product specifically, but what he says about strategy applies directly to anyone who has sat through a planning session that produced a list of priorities with no logic connecting them. His core observation is that most strategy is not actually strategy: it is a collection of goals dressed up as a plan.
Real strategy, in Rumelt's framework, starts with a diagnosis of the actual problem, develops a guiding policy to address it, and then defines coherent actions that reinforce each other. Without that structure, organisations spread resources evenly across everything and making progress on nothing.
The book is full of examples, from business to military history, and Rumelt writes with enough edge to make the diagnosis of bad strategy feel uncomfortably familiar.
4. Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres
Teresa Torres wrote the practical companion to Inspired. Where Cagan makes the case for separating discovery from delivery, Torres explains how to make discovery a consistent team habit rather than an occasional event.
The central premise is that product teams should be in continuous contact with customers through short, weekly conversations that feed directly into decision-making. Torres introduces the Opportunity Solution Tree as a tool for mapping customer needs to potential solutions in a way that keeps the team honest about what they are actually trying to achieve.
The book is structured around habits because Torres is realistic about the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. She provides concrete guidance on how to set up a regular interview cadence, how to involve the full product trio in discovery, and how to test assumptions quickly without over-investing in prototypes before you have validated the problem.
5. Loved by Martina Lauchengco
Product marketing is often treated as something that happens after a product is built, a communication problem rather than a strategic one. Lauchengco's argument is that this is one of the most expensive mistakes a product organisation can make.
Loved focuses on positioning and go-to-market strategy as core product disciplines. Lauchengco explains how strong product marketing helps customers understand not just what a product does but why it matters to them specifically, and why that clarity creates focus across the entire organisation.
The book is particularly useful for product managers and leaders who find themselves owning more of the commercial conversation than they expected. As teams scale and go-to-market becomes more complex, the thinking in Loved helps clarify who a product is actually for, what problem it solves better than the alternatives, and how to communicate that without defaulting to feature lists.
6. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
Voss spent years as a hostage negotiator for the FBI. In Never Split the Difference, he translates the techniques he developed in life-or-death situations into a practical guide for everyday negotiation, and the applications to product work are extensive.
Product managers negotiate constantly: with engineering over scope and timeline, with leadership over priorities, with stakeholders over what success looks like. Most of that negotiation happens with people who have more formal authority and different incentives, which is exactly the situation Voss's methods were designed for.
His core insight: negotiation is emotional before it is rational. Techniques like tactical empathy, calibrated questions, and mirroring work because they help you understand what the other person actually wants rather than what they are saying they want. That distinction matters in product work.
If you want to go beyond reading
Strong product work is less about “knowing the right methods” and more about building the habits, language, and good decision reflexes. Reading alone rarely changes outcomes, the hard part is translating ideas into daily routines.
In our Product Management Training, we take the thinking behind these books and our own experience, and make it practical: participants practise artefacts, get coached on the stakeholder and leadership dynamics, and leave with patterns they can apply the next working day.
