Introduction

At BAM, we have a strong culture of theory that comes from our CTO Marek Kalnik. I will always remember our first 1to1 where I talked to him about design and product and he asked me: “but what is the theory behind it?” What comes with the theory is also the numerous book clubs launched by our various teams (tech, product, managers...).

In short, at BAM we read a lot and if we ask ourselves a question, you guessed it, our first instinct is to go and look for the reference book that talks about it.

It was therefore unthinkable for us to start Product Management, without first learning about the theories and practices that exist outside of BAM! In this article, we therefore share with you our 3 reference books on product basics.

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”Inspired” by Marty Cagan
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Marty Cagan has become the reference in Product Management in Silicon Valley and, on a larger scale, in the world. He is particularly well known for explaining the different product team organization models and their long-term impacts: “delivery team” vs “feature team” vs “product team”.

In his book, he illustrates how product team organizations, and more specifically agile product teams, can prevent us from making good products.

In our opinion, this book is a Must Have for anyone who has questions aboutorganization of a product team. Here you will find answers to the following questions: What is a good product team? How to constitute it and with what roles? How do you make these roles work together? This book will also help you understand why the culture you've created in this team is important and how to scale it up.

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“The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick
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Today, most companies that start creating a product know that to make a good product you have to start by meeting its users. And yet we continue to see products fail. The cause of these failures is not the lack of interviews, but the difficulty in obtaining unbiased information from them.

In his book “The Mom Test”, Rob Fitzpatrick, who has experienced these failures himself, tells us How not to fall into the trap of human bias and especially how to avoid “false positives” that lead us to falsely believe that our idea is the right one.

This book is a good introduction to interviews. In just a few pages, it covers a wide range of questions you ask yourself when you want to do an interview: questions to ask, organization, note taking...

By going beyond theory and giving concrete advice, he deprecates the gesture of interviews. Unlike other more theoretical books on the subject, he punctuates his advice with numerous sample conversations to illustrate the impact of good and bad questions.

For those who want to go further in conversation theory, we recommend the book”Never cut a pear in half.” by Kris Voss, a former FBI negotiator. By explaining how to negotiate a winning one, Kriss Voss gives us tips for getting our interlocutors to tell us about them.
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“Competing Against Luck” by Clayton Christensen
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While we may be tempted to think that some products have become must-haves by chance, this book by Clayton Christensen is there to bring us back to reality. In Competing against Luck, he explains how to create innovation by maximizing its chances of being adopted on a large scale by its users, thanks to the approach client-centric the most advanced: the Jobs to Be Done.

According to him, to create a useful and used product, a company must discover the progress that a user is really looking for and adapt the product to best meet it. In fact, users do not so much adopt a product but rather the service it provides them.

In this book, Clayton Christensen illustrates each of the concepts around Jobs to Be Done, gives a method for discovering and formulating them and accompanies the reader in adapting the product and company processes.

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