Strong Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers

I bought the book as soon as it came out and it was a saving grace. The first step for me, as a product leader was to try and explain how I made product management work. This book has helped me explain why and what good looks like - not for me, but for the organisation and each product person I lead and coach. Strong Product People is filled with advice for any product leader, but it also breaks down the path to success if you're new to product management and you don't necessarily have someone around you to guide you on that journey. Just buy it already, you know you want to!

I have already recommended this book to my fellow product leaders, it's such a practical book, full of all the advice you wish someone would teach you, for example, I know I need to onboard people well, but what does that actually look like? It covers a really diverse range of topics from strategy, skill sets and coaching with easy tools and models that you'll actually want to use. It also has lots of fab little pieces of advice, like giving your people little notes of positive and specific feedback after being in a meeting they're also in. And lots of relevant and quality extra reading recommendations too. I'll be re-reading this for sure.

This is a great starting point to help lead and coach new product managers and think about structuring product in your organisation. I think one of the best books for pms who want to start by coaching themselves. A lot is covered and there's still some natural ambiguity that you need to resolve with the specifics of your own organisation. Definitely read some of the recommended reading which support it.

This is an excellent book that covers all the bases when it comes to effective product leadership. From hiring to inspiring, this book provides actionable steps, frameworks & canvases to enable any head of product to up their game and be the leader their team needs.

This is the only book out there focused on coaching product skills, and luckily it does so amazingly well. The author walks through all the challenges of coaching your product team to excellence - which is hugely helpful for leaders of product teams but also for any product manager who wants to get better at their job and self-coach... A must read!

An essential read for product folk looking to make the big step up or Head of Product and VP people wanting to double check their work.

I've just received this new book and the printing process got horrible wrong: as you can see from the pictures the first pages are upside down and the have been trimmed so bad that content is missing. I hope I can get a decent copy from Amazon because this one is such a poor quality.

This is the ultimate book for a PM, whether you’re just starting out as a team of 1 and need to figure things out fast, or whether you’re an experienced product leader managing multiple product strategies - this has real, actionable content, with frameworks and ideas you can implement immediately. It’s practical, and concise. This will no doubt quickly become core reading for new PMs, and for good reason! So many books talk conceptually and idealistically, but this book gives you actual concrete next steps and activities to run straight away. Perfect for those who want to take action and get to solving problems. I only wish there had been more practical examples and frameworks for hiring, and how to assess candidates, as I think product hiring is inconsistent and it would be great to have some baseline suggestions for teams to use!

I loved it because Petra explained in a brilliant way the fundamental rol of the HoP as Coach, Mentor and Evangelizer

Over a year ago, I started my journey as a product leader and built a product team and practice from scratch. I had no prior experience managing other PMs and this book quickly became the go to guide. It provided much needed clarity around jobs to be done as a product leader and helped structure my thinking. I have the deepest gratitude to Petra for writing this book as it helped me be successful in my new role.

The author humbly calls it a personal travel guide, but in fact its a Solid reference for product leaders at all levels 💪🏼. Love the simple frameworks, the illustrations. Everything I learned from Petra came to life again. Must read if you feel responsible to improve craft and grow your product people to the next level!

This book is super thorough but an important read for all product leaders. She has great frameworks, diagrams and advice. She captures the comprehensive and complex role of PMs very well. My main feedback is that there were parts that I felt like she was making suggestions based on what works best for HER. As a leader, it’s important to note that not everyone will do things the same way and to expect that is to be disappointed. For example, she’s very skilled at drawing visuals to get a point across, but not everyone can. She mentions she thinks it’s important to do that to get a message across, which can be true, but I think calling out how you can collaborate with people who have those skills vs. expecting every PM to do it on their own is important.

This book contains a series of practical instructions on how to run a product team, and offers a 360 view on every aspect a leader should focus on. It's also very handy for Product Managers, since it helps you understand all the functioning parts of a product organization. This book is a must for product people.