Scrum

How to create a winning product strategy

The Alternative To Agile Coaches

Marty Cagan argues that the real alternative to dedicated Agile coaches is competent line management: engineering, product, and design managers coaching their people in hands-on skills. He contrasts a 'Team Red' that…

Product Managers and Product Owners: What’s the Difference?

Teresa Torres examines the difference between product managers and product owners, a question many companies ask her as a discovery coach. She traces how the product manager role evolved from traditional…

Coaching Tools – The Plan

Marty Cagan continues his coaching series by describing how managers can help product managers close specific skill gaps identified in an earlier assessment. He covers product knowledge (users, data, industry, business…

Scaling Agile FAQ

Marty Cagan follows up on his critique of SAFe, the scaled-agile framework, by answering reader questions. He argues that process choices are really culture choices, and that adopting a heavy framework signals top-down…

Product Manager vs. Product Owner Revisited

Marty Cagan revisits his earlier argument that the product manager should also be the product owner, admitting he made a strategic mistake by treating the two titles as synonyms. Many people who took short product owner…

Continuous Discovery

Marty Cagan describes a growing trend where product teams move from batch-style phases to continuous practices in both delivery and discovery. He traces how continuous integration, testing, and deployment have spread…

Big Bang Releases

Cagan describes a "Big Bang" release as a project built for months and then launched all at once, a common outcome of Waterfall but also possible under Scrum. He argues it almost never goes well: dates slip or features…

Requirements Are Not

Marty Cagan argues that the concept of a "requirement" is misleading in product work. What stakeholders and customers present as requirements are often untested assumptions or guesses about an underlying problem, while…

Knocking Down Walls

Marty Cagan argues that as startups grow and split into functional groups, walls form between product, technology, marketing and design, with product-technology being the most damaging. Teams loyal to their function…

How To Kill Innovation

Marty Cagan argues that Six Sigma, a quality-control methodology proven in manufacturing, does real damage when applied to software product discovery and development. He observes that once influential innovators such as…

Laid Off; Now What?

Marty Cagan argues that a layoff, though painful, can be turned into a valuable period for building product management skills and becoming a more desirable candidate. He briefly advises keeping professional social…

Product Management in an Agile Environment

Marty Cagan argues that Agile methods, such as Scrum and XP, change but do not eliminate the product manager's job, and he offers guidance specific to product software rather than custom or IT projects. The product…

The Origins of Agile

Marty Cagan argues that Agile methods such as Scrum originated in the custom software world, where software is built for a specific customer under contract, rather than in product software companies. That origin…

Agile Development Processes

Marty Cagan examines how Agile methods, especially Extreme Programming (XP), fit into product management for commercial products. He first outlines the twelve shared Agile principles and XP's core practices, which were…