Here is a selection of books to help guide product learners, leaders and founders towards books that can help us learn, grow and develop a mindset of #experimentation and #growth.
We have divided into groups based on where you may be at in your product development and personal knowledge journey from learning to advanced and start-up to scale-up.
Product Learners
Lean Startup – a must read where the concepts of rapid experimentation to drive growth are laid out by author Eric Ries. Discover how to ‘learn quicker’ to gain competitive advantage when launching and growing digital products.
Lean UX – another classic from Jeff Gothelf. In this book Jeff covers a user centred approach to experimentation through ‘design thinking’ with user feedback helping validate product assumptions through collaborative work.
Sprint: the bestselling guide to solving business problems and testing new ideas the Silicon Valley way – An excellent 5 day methodology to do all the thinking quickly. Brought to you by those clever folk at Google, this book provides a day by day guide to be able to discover at pace with a working prototype at the end. Thanks Ian Franklin for the recommendation.
User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product – Great book from the legendary Jeff Patton which will help structure the most challenging of backlogs! Getting people to really connect user needs to what they make – the MVP and now, next, later. Stops scope creep and keeps people on track. Thanks Ian Franklin for the recommendation.
Product Leaders
Lean Enterprise – Jez Humble shows us how to use lean in an enterprise context with coverage of continuous delivery and cost accounting to name but a few themes.
Product Founders
Problem & solution validation stage:
Running Lean – Ash Maurya uses a Lean Canvas led approach to systematically test new business ideas and reduce risk of failure.
The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win – In this classic, Steve Blank describes how through rapid iteration, customer feedback and testing your assumptions you can help eliminate risk that typically kills most startups.
Scale-up stage:
Scaling Lean – Ash Maurya’s second book in the series focuses on startups which are starting to find product market fit through provision of a tactical framework for measuring and scaling.
Product-Led Growth – Wes Bush describes the shift from sales led to product led growth that has focused on engaging users to drive growth.
Crossing the Chasm – Geoffrey A Moore’s classic book on how to ‘cross’ Technology Adoption Life Cycle from early adopter type users of your digital product to scaled audiences and mass adoption.
Let’s keep adding to this list, bookmark for future additions.
Please do comment on this post or through the Lean Digital Product Facebook group and let us know your favourite lean books.
Credit: Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash.