By Marty Cagan · svpg.com · LinkedIn
Marty Cagan argues that a product must actually work, not just be the right product, and that software quality remains poor across much of the industry. He notes that manual, under-resourced QA is a common failure, even though modern automated testing practices are well established and can speed time to market while improving user experience. Because the product manager is ultimately accountable for the product's success, poor quality is effectively as damaging as building the wrong features. Cagan urges PMs to take an active role in defining release criteria, including software quality, and to be willing to trade features for time to stabilize the product.
01Key takeaways
- Quality is part of product success; a buggy product is as harmful to users as one with the wrong features.
- Define explicit release criteria that include software quality, and make them part of launch decisions.
- Ask engineering and QA leaders about QA staffing, funding, and testing process without micromanaging them.
- Modern automated testing can reduce time to market and improve QA staff productivity, not just add cost.
- Be prepared to trade new features for time to fix core quality problems when the product is unreliable.
02Key sections
- Working product as a PM responsibility
- Cagan points out that defining the right product is the PM's core job, but a product that doesn't function well fails users regardless of its vision.
- The persistent state of software quality
- Despite decades of development, quality remains weak, a problem worsened by rushed launches in the boom years and a possible recent decline.
- Gap between best and common QA practices
- Many teams still rely on manual, understaffed, undertrained testing that cannot keep up with frequent releases, unlike teams using automated testing.
- Shared accountability for quality
- The PM should not micromanage QA but should actively set release criteria and ask pointed questions about QA staffing, funding, and process.
- Trading features for quality
- Cagan argues that better testing saves time and improves experience, and that teams may need to sacrifice planned features to fix a broken product at its core.
03From the post
“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.