An SVPG Process?

Marty Cagan responds to recurring questions about whether SVPG promotes a specific branded process such as 'the INSPIRED process' or 'the EMPOWERED process'. He argues that nearly everything involves some process, and that his concern is with heavyweight processes and process-focused people that dominate product organizations. He explains that SVPG's practices are observed from strong product companies rather than invented, and that terms like 'product discovery' are neutral labels introduced to describe those practices. Discovery and delivery are parallel activities, each with many possible processes. The core message is that SVPG offers principles, a mindset, and a toolkit for hard problems, not a single prescribed process.

01Key takeaways

• Treat process as situational tools chosen for the problem at hand, not as a fixed rulebook.
• Be wary of heavyweight processes and process-focused roles that crowd out product thinking.
• Use neutral vocabulary such as product discovery to describe practices across companies with different names for them.
• Recognize discovery and delivery as parallel activities, each with many possible approaches.
• Adopt principles and a mindset for hard problems rather than copying a branded method.

02Key sections

Why the question keeps coming up

Cagan notes a growing worry about heavyweight processes and process people in product orgs, and says he is often asked whether SVPG has its own process. He points to an earlier article on processes versus conceptual models.

Process is everywhere

Almost every activity, from cooking to user testing to coding, follows some process. In INSPIRED, the process section is a set of situational techniques, and the word once carried less negative baggage.

Practices observed, not invented

SVPG describes practices it has seen in the best product teams. Neutral terms like product discovery are coined because companies label and entangle their methods in different ways.

Discovery and delivery are parallel, plural

Discovery and delivery run in parallel, much as engineering and testing do, and each has many variants. There is therefore no single canonical SVPG process.

03From the post

“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.