Devops for Growth

1. Product Management Sacred Seven

I love this book for so many reasons. One of the things I love about this is the fact that it is so modular. You can basically pick up in the area of your interest and learn so much from the pages of this book. This book spills the tea on everything from tech business strategy, to pricing, to data privacy.

I really think it should be called “The PM’s Bible” just because the information it contains is so incredibly valuable.

Just to put a little perspective on the value of this book,  I’ve spent over $50k on business coaching and courses related to growing my own business – and we’ve hit multiple six figures in my own data business and helped other new data entrepreneurs do the same in the first seven months of their own businesses.  And even with all of that, I’ve seen stuff inside this book that was truly just “ninja shite.” It just totally blew my mind. I can’t say enough good things about this book!

In terms of what others have to say – it has 393 reviews on Amazon with a 4.8 star rating. It is a new book and the gist of the book is basically this:

The authors themselves are already accomplished seasoned PMs themselves, and they ended up surveying and interviewing 67 product managers from the worlds’ finest companies across 4 different continents and they took all of that research findings and they basically broke it down into an essential framework for what makes a truly great product manager. 

They found 7 core pillars that distinguish an average product from a truly great and exceptional one. Those are: 

• Product design
• Economics
• Marketing & growth
• Psychology
• UI/UX
• Law & policy
• Data Science 

The book covers each of those topics in-depth, and within each of these pillars, it shares insider strategies developed from within the walls of the world’s most innovative tech companies. 

4. Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love (Addison-Wesley Signature Series by Roman Pichler

Roman Pichler uses real-world examples to demonstrate how product owners can create successful products with Scrum. He describes a broad range of agile product management practices, including making agile product discovery work, taking advantage of emergent requirements, creating the MVP, leveraging early customer feedback, and working closely with the development team. The author covers the following aspects: what product owners do, how they do it, and the implications, how to create a compelling product vision, how to manage the product backlog effectively, how to planning the release bringing clarity to scheduling, budgeting, and functionality decisions, etc.

5. The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software (Pragmatic Programmers) by Jonathan Rasmusson

Jonathan Rasmusson shows you how to kick-start, execute, and deliver your agile projects. Combining tools, core principles, and plenty of humor, The Agile Samurai gives you the tools and the attitude to deliver something of value every sprint.

6. The Product Manager’s Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed as a Product Manager by Steven Haines

The Survival Guide is great for anyone who’s just starting out as a Product Owner. Steven Haines, one of today’s leading Product Management thought-leaders, gives a detailed high-level overview of what product ownership is, the critical elements of the role, and why they’re so important to shipping successful products. The Product Manager’s Survival Guide provides best practices, practical on-the-job advice, and a step-by-step blueprint for succeeding in Product Ownership. After reading this book you will definitely find everything you need to make consistent positive impacts on your business. With this practical guide, you have the most powerful tool available for increasing your productivity quickly in a way that is noticeable and measurable.

7. The Product Manager’s Desk Reference 2E by Steven Haines

This book is a comprehensive reference guide that covers the product ownership process and the essential skills and responsibilities of the Product Owner, including market analysis, understanding customer needs, segmentation, owning the product roadmap, and more.
It is a progression of the practitioner across the career cycle as well as the progression of the product across its life cycle to establish clear guidelines as to what must be done, when, by whom, and with what level of expertise.

8. Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan

Here is another product ownership book, written by one of the most successful product owner in modern times. Marty Cagan, a longtime product executive for companies like eBay and HP, walks the reader through his hard-won insights about how to identify when you’ve got the right product and when you don’t, how to work with technical teams to get your products built the right way, and the basics of how to be a great product owner.
Why do some products make the leap to greatness while others do not? Creating inspiring products begins with discovering a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible. This book covers very important topics like: how do you decide which product opportunities to pursue?
How do you identify the MVP that will be successful? How do you manage the often conflicting demands of company execs, customers, sales, marketing, engineering, design, and more?
How can you adapt Agile methods for commercial product environments? Product ownership expert Marty Cagan answers these questions and hundreds more as he shares lessons learned, techniques, and best practices from working for and with some of the most successful companies in the high-tech industry.

Cet ouvrage forme une bonne introduction à une approche raisonnée de la transformation "digitale". Elle conviendra aussi bien aux néophytes qu'aux curieux voulant creuser les éléments théoriques, avec force référence pour plonger dans la théorie et la pratique.

J'émets quand même une limite, dont l'auteur parle à propos de l'ouvrage de Laloux ("Reinventing organization") autour de la généralisation de pratiques non fondées. Cecil se réfère régulièrement à "The Lean Startup", avec son principe de "Build, Measure, Learn". Or celui-ci, comme le rappelle Dave Snowden, part de quelques réussites pour généraliser une pratique, avec une base théorique quasi inexistante. Ceci ne veut pas dire que la pratique est "mauvaise". Par contre elle est questionnable. C'est étonnamment une posture opposée qui anime le milieu du Lean, qui produit une certaine dissonance.

Au final, #Hyperlean est une approche pragmatique, actionnable pour les dirigeants et les équipes, avec les éléments pour adopter une posture Lean dans la "révolution digitale".