What is the Best Book on Lean Product Development?

You’re here because you want to know what the best book on lean product development is. Product management and development as a discipline is widely documented, there are literally thousands of books available right now that you can either read, listen to or ingest in some sort of high-speed I-am-alive-number-five high-tech-app-way.

Even if you are a read-a-book-in-8-minutes-with-an-app kind of person, there are still only so many books you can get through, and who has time to waste on books that just aren’t very good? 

There are lots of lists out there of the best product management books, but there are very few that champion the books on lean product development. We asked our team, our network of leading product experts, and our customers, what the best book on lean product development is, and these were some of the top answers that focus on lean principles and methodologies.

Let’s take a look at what they suggested (in no particular order).

The shortlist for the best book on lean product development

1. The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses
2. The Lean Product Playbook – How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback
3. Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
4. Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
5. Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience
6. Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value
7. Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
8. Radical Focus: Achieving Your Goals with Objectives and Key Results
9. The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You
10. Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value and Business Value
11. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
12. Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products
13. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Projects to Mainstream Customers
14. Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction While Embracing Uncertainty

1. The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses – Eric Ries

The Lean Startup is a real contender for the title of the best book on product development, here’s why. Since it was published in 2001, Eric’s lean startup methodology has been written about in some of the world’s leading news publications like the Huff Po, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times to list a few. 

But it’s not just the journos who love it, it’s product managers like you. It’s widely regarded as a must-read for founders, but product managers can glean so much from this book too. Key takeaways are the build, measure, and learn feedback loop and the value of an MVP. If you haven’t read it yet, get on it. It’s the foundation for all that is to come.

2. The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback – Dan Olsen

The Lean Product Playbook is an absolute winner of a book, when Dan chose ‘playbook’ for the title he was on the money. The book gives the reader an end-to-end plan of how to launch a product with lean principles at every stage. 

As Laura Klein, Author of UX for Lean Startups says it’s  “A great, detailed guide on how to find product-market fit and make things people will love. This book should be required reading for everybody building products.”

3. Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group) – Marty Cagan

How could we try to find the best book on lean product development and not include something written by Marty Cagan? Inspired is, for lack of a better word, inspired. Marty Cagan, as you probably already know, is a bit of a legend in the product world, and if you haven’t read one of his books, this is a great one to start with.

This book covers how to build a product team, how to build the right thing, how to scale your operation and so much more. It is a bit of a masterclass in lean product development, so, don’t walk, run to your nearest bookstore to get your copy.

4. Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works – Ash Maurya

Running Lean is part of the lean series by O’Riley and it won’t be the last one we mention in this list. The reason why we love this book is that it’s a straightforward how-to. If you follow the plan Ash describes in this book, it really will enable you to build a product people love. 

After reading it you’ll be a master of the product canvas, product-market fit, and continuous product discovery. 

5. Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience – Jeff Gothelf with Josh Seiden

Lean UX might not be the first book you expect to be considered the best book on lean product development, but UX is an integral part of your product’s success. Reading this book will be hugely beneficial to your designers, developers and product managers, even your leadership team. Understanding how lean methodologies fit into your UX function will enable you to create a cross-functional team and remove silos that are slowing you down.

It’s also a relatively quick read, which is always nice.

6. Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value – Melissa Perri

Melissa Perri is one of our favorite people, she’s a powerhouse in the product world and is not only an author and a CEO, but also a teacher at Harvard Business School and the two online schools she created Product institute and The CPO Accelerator. Fangirling aside, Escaping the Build Trap is a must-read for product managers everywhere. 

Mellissa artfully describes how to build products and scale your business without getting stuck in a feature factory. We actually had Melissa chat with us about product ops on our webinar series, if you haven’t given it a watch I recommend you do it here.

7. Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster – Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz

By my count, this is the 3rd book from the O’Riley lean series that we’ve listed, and Lean Analytics is a fantastic book to add to your to-read list. The reason why this book is so important is that it focuses on how not to get hung up on vanity metrics, how to use data to push your product forward, and gives clear insights into how to do things right with data.

The authors go into detail on different business models and their respective customer funnels, which is so useful for understanding your own business. If you haven’t read this book then we suggest you do it at your earliest convenience.

8. Radical Focus: Achieving Your Goals with Objectives and Key Results – Christina Wodtke

Christina Wodtke is a fantastic writer and it’s no surprise that Radical Focus, now in its second edition, is a bestseller. You might be wondering why I have included a book about OKRs in this list, but you can’t really operate a lean business model without OKRs. The reason for this is that OKRs help you focus on your objectives over lots of outcomes and will ensure that you are results-focused and able to pivot quickly. See, I told you it’s lean.

We’ve also had the pleasure of hosting Christina on our webinar series and you can watch her talk about the dark side of OKRs here.

9. The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You – Rob Fitzpatrick

The Mom Test is a really fun book. A big part of being lean is understanding your market and your customers, and this book gives you a core framework and toolkit for asking the right questions to get that deep customer understanding and market intelligence. 

You shouldn’t spend your time asking friends or your mom if your business is a good idea, you should spend your time talking to your customers. Customer conversations aren’t easy, and getting valuable feedback isn’t all that straightforward. If you want pointers to avoid creating bias then you should read this book.

10. Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value and Business Value – Teressa Torres

Teressa Torres is an absolute master when it comes to product management – if she thinks it’s a good idea, it is. Her book Continuous Discovery Habits is like having your very own product coaching session. She shows you how to do continuous discovery in a way that is achievable, so you can ensure that you are always building the right things and delivering value to the business.

We love Teresa, she’s amazing and we had the best time chatting with her in our webinar where we were uncovering the secret to continuous product discovery. If you haven’t given it a watch, do it now while you wait for your copy of Continuous Discover Habits to arrive.

11. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters – Richard Rumelt

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy is a great book for understanding how to create a strategy that is good and that’s hugely important to the success of lean product development. If you do not have a clear understanding of the product strategy there is absolutely no chance you will be able to deliver a product that will be successful.

This book is particularly popular because Rumelt is a brilliant writer, his style, advice, and structure make it a genuine pleasure to read and will give you everything you need to be an exceptional strategist. 

12. Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products – Marty Cagan

Another book by the wildly talented Marty Cagan, Empowered is all about how to make sure your team is empowered to make extraordinary things. Being lean and being successful means having a fantastic team. What Marty explores so eloquently in this bestseller is that it’s up to you as a product leader to make space for your people to be their best selves and be able to innovate.

It’s easy to forget that your team brings so much to the table and sometimes it really is as simple as making sure that you create the environment for them to shine for your product to be truly successful.

13. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Projects to Mainstream Customer – Geoffrey A.Moore

This is an oldie but a goodie, and we love Crossing the Chasm so much that we actually built our product vision template based on what Geoffrey wrote in this book. This is a book about marketing but, like I said before, you do need a holistic knowledge of how your entire company works for you to really be successful when it comes to lean product development, especially if your company is product-led.

This might not be the best book on lean product development but it is the best at rounding out your knowledge. It’s well worth a read so please check it out.

14. Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction While Embracing Uncertainty – Bruce McCarthy & C. Todd Lombardo

This is a ProdPad favorite, and not just because Janna wrote the foreword. Bruce and C.Todd are product visionaries and we couldn’t make a list of books on lean product development without including their fantastic contribution on roadmaps.

Product Roadmaps Relaunched is fantastic for new product managers, it gives you so much information and actionable theory it really is a book that you should have on your shelf that you can turn to again and again.

There is also a nice screenshot of an older but still awesome iteration of ProdPad, so if you have it, or get it, you can have a look at what our now/next/later roadmap looked like a few years ago. And if you aren’t aware of what ProdPad looks like now, why not start a free trial to see for yourself?

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So there you have it, our shortlist, or long list for the best book on lean product development, and we’re not going to pick a winner and you know why? Because reading is fundamental and you can’t just stop at one. So to us, every single one of these books is the best book on lean product development.

The library is open squirrel friends so please do let us know if there are any books you think I missed, and as always I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.