Worth Reading?
Yes.
Inspired– Marty Cagan.
Why?
This book was embedded somewhere in my “To Be Read” pile for several years. It should have been closer to the top. Marty Cagan, founding partner of the Silicon Valley Product Group, former VP, Product at eBay, and other things… has provided a really great group of insights in this work.
Even approaching 10 years since initial publication, it seems as if released today it would be perfectly applicable to digital product management, and beyond.
Cagan appears to truly appreciate the role various team members play in product creation. It might be the case that any cohort thinks of its role as key to success.
- Without Development, there’d be no product.
- Without good design and interaction design, products could be much more likely to fail.
- Without good Product Management, you could easily build a finely tuned, well functioning product that no one cares about.
What Cagan shows in a no BS kind of way is how Great Products can be achieved through a balance of the disciplines. He talks about the importance of both engineering and user experience and product management, as well as some of the tensions between them. While this isn’t a work that goes deeply into every template for various product phases, there’s a decent overview of various stages on the way to launch.
There’s a handful of books I think any aspiring Digital Product Manager should probably check out. This is one of them.