Want to step up your product management game? Read this.

Are you ready to master one of business’s most rewarding roles?

Julia Barham, product management extraordinaire, has the book for you.

The Product Management Playbook: Create, Ship, and Optimize Winning Products is your guide to becoming the product manager (PM) you’ve always wanted to be. And it’s officially on pre-order for 15% off list price.

What is product management?

Product management is not a one-size-fits-all career.

In fact, if you ask a dozen PMs how they would describe their job, you’ll likely get a d0zen different answers, from ‘orchestrator’ to ‘team quarterback.’ Yet, there is one thing that rings true for product managers: they act as a connective tissue behind the scenes of our favorite products.

Responsibilities of a Product Manager include:

• Translating market research, customer insights, and business goals into products that deliver value
• Establishing a product vision, strategy, and roadmap that defines success
• Guiding teams that build technology-enabled solutions
• Influence teams and maintain alignment across different groups
• Optimize in-market solutions with evidence-based decision-making
• Monitor data and synthesize insights into actionable improvements

Everything you need as a product manager

Current or aspiring product managers, product leaders, digital professionals or career changers who are considering product management…this book is especially for you.

Many product managers haven’t gotten through any specialized training. If you’re anything like Julia Barham, you were thrown into (or dove headfirst into) the deep end! Figuring things out by trial and error has its perks, but what about those looking for inspiration, or just starting out in their product management careers?

Julia Barham has written the guide for product managers that she wishes she had when starting this career path.

If you’re on a mission keep customers happy and businesses healthy, then join Julia as she guides you through high-impact problem-solving frameworks and methods that every PM needs.

What does The Product Management Playbook have that other PM books don’t?

If product management itself isn’t easily captured in one title, how can one book capture everything you need to know? The secret is this: Julia Barham uses her incredibly varied background to showcase frameworks and plans that account for the wide breadth of customers and businesses that PMs interact with.

Take it from John Cutler, writer and product management extraordinaire who wrote the foreword to The Product Management Playbook:

“[Julia] has led products at a subscription media company, built experimentation culture at a major bank, launched a digital-first insurance model from scratch, and scaled acquisition portfolios serving millions of customers. That range matters. It’s the reason the advice in this book holds up, even when your context doesn’t match the Silicon Valley default.”

The Product Management Playbook gets down to the goal of product management: creating, shipping, and optimizing winning products.

What else does this book include?

• 21 step-by-step product management methods
• Ready-to-use templates to use in everyday work for real-world impact
• A skills assessment test to baseline your core competencies
• Technologies for PMs working on AI-based products
• Thought leadership insights on what separates elite PMs from the rest
• Interview tips for aspiring product managers

Who is Julia Barham?

Julia Barham is a product executive, patented inventor, and veteran of the full product journey—from zero-to-one launches to scaling market-leading solutions across Fortune 100 companies. She has built inaugural product teams, led B2C and B2B products, and run digital experimentation engines that generated multimillion-dollar revenue gains.

Julia’s work has earned top-tier recognition for innovation and design, but her true passion is helping teams cut through corporate complexity and bridge the gap between ambitious strategy and daily execution—the space where most business leaders and product teams struggle. Read more »

Q&A with the author

Q: Why this book? How will it help me?

A: This book is meant to give you something you can use on Monday morning when a new problem hits your inbox. It keeps in mind the reality for everyday practitioners: managing a portfolio of features in different stages of maturity, trying to balance discovery and delivery simultaneously, working without durable design and data partners, and dealing with needy stakeholders.

Q: If I’m not a product manager, will I get anything out of this book?

A: Yes! This book uses the term PM as shorthand, but it’s written for anyone building technology-enabled solutions to meet customer needs and business goals. If that’s the work you do, this book is for you.

Q: How is AI changing the product manager role?

A: Yes, AI is reshaping and accelerating parts of the product development life cycle in powerful ways, but even AI product teams require human-in-the-loop checkpoints.

But if you’re working directly with artificial intelligence, there is an AI Product Manager’s Starter Kit included in this book!

When does The Product Management Playbook come out?

The Product Management Playbook: Create, Ship, and Optimize Winning Products will be released on July 14, 2026. Until then, it is available for pre-order at 15% off the list price.