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

Perri's book names a condition that most product organisations fall into without noticing: the build trap, where shipping features becomes the measure of progress and the connection between those features and actual outcomes is quietly severed. The book is structured as an argument for outcome-led product management — what it looks like, how it differs from output-led work, what organisational conditions make it possible. For product direction this is one of the clearest diagnostic vocabularies in contemporary product writing; many teams only notice they are trapped once Perri gives them the words. Read alongside Cagan's Inspired and Empowered for the broader Silicon Valley consensus this piece participates in. A usefully uncomfortable book.