Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value

• Melissa Perri
• 2019-04-09
• 978-1491982507
• Product Management

It is a book that discusses the challenges of product management and provides advice on how to overcome them.

Perri argues that many product teams fall into the "build trap," which is a cycle of building features without validating them or measuring their impact on customers. This can lead to teams wasting time and resources on features that no one wants or needs.

Perri argues that effective product management is about creating real value for customers. This means understanding their needs and pain points, and building products that solve their problems. It also means measuring the impact of products on customers and making adjustments as needed.

The book is divided into four parts:

Part 1: The Build Trap
This part of the book introduces the concept of the build trap and discusses why product teams fall into it.

Part 2: The Foundations of Effective Product Management
This part of the book discusses the foundations of effective product management, such as customer discovery, product strategy, and roadmapping.

Part 3: Escaping the Build Trap
This part of the book provides advice on how to escape the build trap and build products that customers love.

Part 4: Building a Product Culture
This part of the book discusses how to build a product culture that is focused on creating real value for customers.

One of the key takeaways from the book is that product management is a cross-functional role. Product managers need to be able to work effectively with engineers, designers, marketers, and other stakeholders to bring a product to market.

Another key takeaway is that product management is a data-driven discipline. Product managers need to be able to collect and analyze data to make informed decisions about their products.

Escaping the Build Trap is a valuable resource for any product manager who wants to learn how to be more effective and to create products that customers love.

Here are some specific tips from the book:

Start with customer discovery. Talk to your customers to understand their needs and pain points. This will help you to identify the problems that you need to solve with your product.

Create a product strategy. Your product strategy should define the vision for your product and how it will solve customer problems.

Build a roadmap. Your roadmap should prioritize the features that you need to build to achieve your product strategy.

Measure the impact of your product on customers. Use data to track how customers are using your product and how it is impacting their lives. This will help you to identify areas where you can improve your product.

Build a product culture. Create a culture that is focused on creating real value for customers. This means empowering employees to make decisions and to experiment.