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

About the Book

Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value by Melissa Perri is a practical and insightful guide to modern product management, helping organisations shift their focus from simply building more features to creating products that deliver meaningful customer and business value.

The book explores the common challenges businesses face when product teams become focused on meeting deadlines, completing tasks, and releasing features rather than solving real customer problems. Melissa Perri explains how organisations can escape this cycle by adopting a strong product strategy, understanding customer needs, and measuring success through meaningful business outcomes.

Through practical examples, business insights, and actionable frameworks, the author demonstrates how companies can build effective product teams, align product development with organisational goals, and create a culture of continuous learning and innovation.

Key Highlights:

• Explains the concept of the Build Trap and how to overcome it.
• Introduces effective product management principles and strategies.
• Focuses on customer needs and delivering real business value.
• Explores outcome-driven product development.
• Provides guidance on building successful product teams.
• Connects product strategy with organisational goals.
• Encourages innovation, experimentation, and continuous improvement.

Ideal For: Product managers, startup founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, project managers, product designers, business analysts, and professionals interested in product development and business strategy.

Discover how to move beyond building products for the sake of delivery and create solutions that customers value and businesses can grow with.

About the Author

Melissa Perri is an internationally recognised product management expert, author, strategic advisor, educator, and entrepreneur. She is known for helping organisations develop effective product strategies, build successful product teams, and create meaningful value for customers.

She is the founder and CEO of Product Institute, an organisation that helps businesses develop modern product management practices through executive advisory, professional education, and training programmes. She has worked with major organisations, including Capital One, Vanguard, Walmart, and JPMorgan Chase, helping them improve their product strategies and organisational performance.

Melissa was appointed to the faculty of Harvard Business School in 2019, where she taught Product Management in the MBA programme. She is also a sought-after keynote speaker and thought leader in product development, business innovation, and strategic leadership.

She is the author of the acclaimed book Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value and co-author of Product Operations. She graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Operations Research and Information Engineering.

Through her writing, teaching, and consulting, Melissa Perri continues to help business leaders and product professionals build customer-focused organisations and achieve sustainable growth.