Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) and author of Inspired, Empowered and Transformed.
Marty Cagan argues that while remote product teams can deliver nearly as well as co-located ones, discovery and innovation suffer most when people work apart. He frames discovery as the core challenge, since creativity…
Marty Cagan argues that the gap between the best product companies and the rest comes from a misunderstanding of technology's role. He recalls Marc Andreessen's warning that software is eating the world and notes that…
Marty Cagan argues that when product managers find themselves working from home, they should treat the unexpected free time as an opportunity rather than a loss. Most PMs struggle to find time for the deep, high-value…
Marty Cagan argues that team objectives are the mechanism for assigning work to empowered product teams in a way that still executes the company's product strategy. Product leadership chooses which problems matter and…
Marty Cagan argues that empowerment in product teams must be paired with accountability, and that how accountability applies depends on the ambition of the objective. A team that misses a bold "Moon Shot" goal is…
Marty Cagan argues that setting team objectives for a quarter is not enough; product teams must actively track and manage progress throughout the period. He explains that ongoing 'keep the lights on' work can crowd out…
Marty Cagan argues that product organizations focused on team autonomy still need deliberate forms of collaboration around objectives. He describes two patterns: shared objectives, where several teams co-own a goal such…
Cagan argues that while most team objectives should be aspirational, some situations require high-integrity commitments: deliverables with dates leaders can rely on, driven by trade shows, contracts, tax deadlines…
Once leaders assign a problem to a product team, they must also signal how ambitious the team should be in its discovery work. Cagan frames objectives as bets that spread risk across a portfolio, ranging from low-risk…
Cagan argues that once leaders decide which problems product teams should tackle, the mechanics of assigning objectives matter a great deal. Leaders own the decision of which team takes which problem, guided by product…
Marty Cagan argues that team objectives should empower product teams by assigning them a hard problem to solve rather than a feature to build, along with the strategic context needed to make good decisions. Handing over…
Marty Cagan explains why he has largely stopped recommending OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to most companies: the technique is simple, but organizations rarely have the structure it needs to work. He argues three…
Marty Cagan argues that once a product strategy is set, leaders cannot simply step back, because no strategy survives contact with reality. Teams will hit dependencies, technical gaps, customer crises, platform…
Cagan argues that once a product strategy is set, leaders face a fork: hand teams features to build (feature teams and roadmaps) or hand them problems to solve (empowered product teams). The difference is whether teams…
Marty Cagan argues that the insights forming the foundation of a product strategy are the hardest but most valuable part of product work, and they cannot be produced by a template or framework. He says strong insights…
Marty Cagan argues that organizations believe they are good at focus but usually chase 20-30 'critical' initiatives when only two or three truly matter. He contrasts this with Pandora's stakeholder-driven prioritization…
Marty Cagan argues that empowered product teams need hard problems to solve, and product strategy is the discipline of deciding which problems matter. He observes that many companies have plenty of features and projects…
This is an index post introducing Marty Cagan's series of articles on the manager's role in coaching product managers. Cagan explains that he uses his blog and the product community as a testing ground for draft…
Marty Cagan argues that ethics deserves its own explicit place in product decisions, proposing a fifth risk alongside value, usability, feasibility and business viability: 'Should we build it?' He notes ethics often…
Marty Cagan argues that a manager has a large effect on whether a product manager is happy, and that good managers should check in weekly on whether the PM finds her work meaningful, is growing in her career, and has…
Marty Cagan argues that empowered product teams can only make good decisions if they understand the broader business context they operate in. He outlines six layers of strategic context that leaders should share and…
Marty Cagan argues that in empowered product teams, the quality of decisions depends not only on logic and data but on how they are made, so that teammates, executives, stakeholders and customers can understand and…
Marty Cagan argues that integrity is the foundation of trust in empowered product teams, and that trust rests on both competence and character. He acknowledges that integrity is hard to maintain, since product managers…
Marty Cagan explains how SVPG operates: it advises startups and growth-stage companies and runs public and private workshops on how strong product teams work. Demand far exceeds capacity, which he attributes to SVPG's…
Marty Cagan argues that the most important thing a product manager coach brings is the right mindset, not just the right tools. Techniques like 1:1s can backfire if the manager uses them to assign tasks rather than…
Marty Cagan argues that customer-centricity is a core trait for product managers that is shaped heavily by company culture and by what leaders demonstrate. He stresses that the true customer should be defined narrowly…
Marty Cagan argues that Imposter Syndrome is real and healthy when understood correctly: it is a signal that you have not prepared enough. Rather than trying to push past the fear, he uses it as motivation to study…
Marty Cagan argues that a product succeeds only when it is solved simultaneously for the customer, the business, and the technology, which he frames as a multiplicative equation: if any one factor is zero, the product…
Marty Cagan answers reader questions prompted by his earlier article distinguishing product teams from feature and delivery teams. He clarifies that designers and engineers contribute far beyond usability and…
Cagan argues that much of the confusion about product management comes from lumping together two very different team types that both get called 'product teams.' He distinguishes delivery teams (essentially re-packaged…