Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) and author of Inspired, Empowered and Transformed.
Marty Cagan reviews Tony Fadell's book "Build," written from a CEO's perspective, and argues it is a standout guide to what the best product companies do. Cagan notes that Fadell's advice is deliberately old-school…
Cagan argues that beyond empowered teams hitting measurable outcomes, the best product companies also pursue a harder-to-define standard of excellence: desirability, delight, or 'spirit.' He acknowledges the tension…
Cagan and Moore argue that 'transformation' is often described with labels like Agile or product-led, which fail to capture what actually changes. They propose defining transformation by three concrete shifts: how a…
Marty Cagan argues that software buyers face an overwhelming marketplace, with tens of thousands of apps and thousands of solutions per category, so simply building a product no longer guarantees adoption. To win…
Marty Cagan revisits The Lost Interview with Steve Jobs to answer a question he has struggled with: why do so many product companies remain weak when the best ones are the most valuable in the world? Rather than…
Marty Cagan argues that the essential nature of technology-powered products is hard to grasp until you've worked on a strong product team, and that most people think they understand it but don't. He highlights a rarely…
Marty Cagan distinguishes coaching from mentoring using a distinction he learned from Bill Campbell. Both are valuable, but mentoring is offered as honest opinion the mentee may or may not act on, so the mentor carries…
This article profiles Sling TV, the streaming service that positioned itself as an early OTT provider, and argues that continuous reinvention and speed are central to its growth. Its SVP of Strategy and Technology…
This article describes how John Deere, a 185-year-old equipment maker, is repositioning itself as a technology company centered on "smart farming." Facing a projected global population of 9.6 billion by 2050 and rising…
This essay describes how Ramsey Solutions, a financial education company, approached its digital transformation by first examining its own identity and capabilities rather than only envisioning its future. Its CEO's…
This piece profiles Datasite, formerly Merrill Corporation, a financial-document printer that had to reinvent itself as cloud demand grew. The company was slow, hierarchical and risk-averse, so it reframed its culture…
This essay recounts how Datasite, a SaaS provider for dealmaking, rebuilt its outdated platform under pressure to keep clients from leaving. When the platform failed during a beta launch with an Irish client, the…
Marty Cagan proposes a simple taxonomy for the types of product coaching, since no widely accepted vocabulary exists yet. He distinguishes product-related coaching (delivery, discovery, product leadership, and…
Marty Cagan introduces Martina Lauchengco's book LOVED, which argues that product/market fit has two halves: a strong product and a strong market approach. Building on his earlier work on product discovery, he contends…
Marty Cagan examines the adage that product managers get blamed for failure but rarely credited for success, and asks whether that is fair. He explains that on empowered product teams the product manager owns value and…
Marty Cagan argues that the most damaging way companies try to scale product management is splitting the PM job across two people, the so-called 'two in a box' anti-pattern. The core problem is that the PM on an…
Marty Cagan argues that the root cause of many large companies losing their product innovation is an over-reliance on process over people. He builds on his earlier overview of Product Ops models by focusing on why…
Marty Cagan argues that 'Product Ops' has become a vague label, with at least six distinct meanings in companies today, making a claim that a company 'has Product Ops' nearly meaningless. He reviews five models he finds…
Marty Cagan follows up on his earlier critique of 'process people' hijacking product ops. He notes that 'product ops' has no settled definition, and he has identified at least six different versions in his work with…
Marty Cagan argues that product organizations contain three kinds of contributors rather than two: makers (designers, engineers, researchers), managers, and a growing group he calls process people. Process roles like…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams should actively seek out critical, negative feedback, since qualitative insight about why users don't adopt, buy, or stay is more valuable than most quantitative data. He observes…
Marty Cagan uses the Theranos collapse as a cautionary tale about founders who can sell a product concept but fail to discover and deliver a product that solves the real need. He argues that demand testing is the easy…
Cagan and Moore argue that moving to an empowered product-team model is a major cultural shift that must start with senior leaders, who still have legitimate needs to run the business. Their answer is not to simply step…
Marty Cagan argues that during and after the pandemic, teams are sliding back into heavy requirements documents (PRDs) because remote collaboration is tiring. He reframes the core of strong product work as three things…
Marty Cagan marks 40 years since starting his career in software engineering, reflecting on the long run of work he found rewarding and the lessons it taught him. He argues that learning and experience compound over…
Marty Cagan reflects on a recent article he wrote critiquing the MBA pathology in product management, which he admits backfired. Although the core message was valid, opening the piece with a provocative Elon Musk quote…
Marty Cagan asks whether product discovery applies to feature teams, which are handed a list of features rather than problems to solve. At a simple level, discovery is irrelevant there because the solution is already…
Marty Cagan's first published article, from a 1986 HP Journal issue, is a technical overview of Hewlett-Packard's internal AI Workstation research program and its first product, a Common Lisp development environment. It…
Marty Cagan, author of four bestselling product books, shares his process for writing non-fiction books, framing the book as a product whose readers are customers. He argues that the decisive factor is whether the…
Marty Cagan argues that the MBA pathology, the set of habits instilled by many business programs, continues to produce weak product managers and weak products despite claims that it would self-correct. He stresses he is…