The Product Manager's Field Guide: Practical Tools, Exercises, and Resources for Improved Product Management

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. Four stars for being a fast read and a useful reference even 3 years after I purchased it. One star removed out of 5 because it fails to address some issues that I found to be important working within a large company and for not including support for smaller sized company product management. But read on to see what I am doing with this book now that I too work for a small startup company...I purchased this book along with another book titled "Product Management" by Donald R. Lehmann and Russell S, Winer:  Product Management 4th Edition (Mcgraw Hill Series in Marketing) The field guide is more like an overview of all aspects of project management mixed with some forms to be used in various aspects of managing your product mix, and as such it is a fast read and a useful reference during the life of a product. I did not buy or read the "Project Manager's Handbook" of which this book is associated:  The Product Managers Handbook, 3E The book targets product issues found within large companies were many people are involved internal to the company. You may not have thought of this book as a useful reference for a small or startup company for this reason.But now that I am a co-founder of a small company I continue to refer back to this field guide to find solutions to difficult problems in managing my current service offering back into these same large companies. In particular I am using the "Launch Implementation Checklist" and "Post-Launch Tracking: Early Course Correction." I use these worksheets with respect to improving my own service offering and as a way to create value back into larger companies who want more impact with their products using my service.Best regards,Ron Fredericks[...]

How can you requires a review ! It is super annoying to write a review like this only for continuing the reading....

Good book for what I needed at work. I use it for reference. Very helpful for what I do. Amen

This is a very good book if you are new to product management or are making a career switch from a non-managerial career to product management. If you have managed one or two product life cyles in the past, you are less likely to benefit from it.A significant portion of this book is devoted to general management, but in the product management context. Nonetheless, the book is very well organized and systematic. It develops concepts in detail and offers a wealth of information, that you would otherwise have to pay a lot more to collect from other sources. I would highly recommend it to all beginners in this discipline. Experienced individuals may use it as an occassional reference.

This and the handbook are very similar, you need only one. This is a difficult topic to cover when you are not sure of the depth of background of the reader. Does the reader have knowledge of marketing or not. To this point it appears in many places the book assumes you do not, so any general marketing text could be a better source.

I bought this as my first book about product management, and was not disappointed. It goes through the steps you should think about, with almost enough checklists to make it specific.The tone is readable although there are several references to another book by the same author. Some of the lists are patronising and verbose, particularly where you are asked to review your own skills against the description you have just read.I would also have liked more industry-specific explanation, since I work with b2b software and most of the book is about mass-produced retail products. But I don't regret buying it, and do recommend it.

Linda Gorchels has a clear writing style and explains things exceedingly well, but where this book lets itself down is the lack of real usable tools...having read many books on Product Management, I was really hoping that this might actually be different and contain explicit working tools, but instead it tiptoes round this supposedly central concept to the book and instead generalises around "reflection points" and vague "check lists". In itself it is a useful guide, provoking the occasional 'oh yeah, I could do that' response and in its credit it does cover a fair amount of ground but it is not earth-shattering or demystifying by any means...