Review of Product Management in Practice by Matt Lemay
tl;dr — Product Management in Practice has great practical advice for aspiring product managers.
The skill of actually figuring out what you need is probably as important as what you do after you figure it out.
What is the book about?
Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century is written by Matt LeMay, an experienced product leader.
This book has been written, according to Matt LeMay, to talk about the day to day practice of product management with all its ambiguity, contradictions and compromises. This book does not have any fancy framework or tool that will solve world hunger or make you superman; rather it is a look at the work from the trenches.
What does this book cover?
Product Roadmaps Relaunched is a short book with 12 chapters that covers the following topics.
- What is/is not Product Management? Who is/ is not a good Product Manager.
- The CORE connective skills of a Product Management
- The importance of being curious
- Best Practices and why they suck
- Overcommunication > Undercommunication
- Dealing with Senior Stakeholders
- Understanding Data
- Roadmaps / Prioritization
- Working in an Agile fashion
- Good Times, Bad Times
Every chapter is independent of the other and is followed by a summary.
What did I like?
Product Management in Practice is an excellent guide to navigating the chaos that is day to day organizational work. Until I read it, I never realized how much I did not know, how many anti-patterns I was falling prey to and how much more I needed to learn.
This book simply drips with real life experiences. Some of these I have encountered and failed to navigate well. And some of these will be things I can, hopefully, navigate better now that they have been articulated along with the classic traps associated to them.
What did I not like?
Nothing.
My Recommendation
I strongly recommend this book to anyone aspiring to get into product management. It is one of those rare books that I, and hopefully you, will keep reading to get insights.
Originally published at Digital Amrit.
