Marty Cagan argues that the product model, a way of organizing companies around discovering and delivering valuable solutions, is the key capability for responding to major opportunities and threats. He points to the…
Marty Cagan uses the social contract that Stanford's d.school Launchpad course requires of its students as a lens on what strong product leaders must commit to. The contract centers on not complaining about workload…
Teresa Torres introduces the product trio: a product manager, designer, and engineer who share responsibility for product decisions rather than handing work off in sequence. She argues the traditional handoff model…
Marty Cagan contrasts the traditional project model, where IT builds specific features by fixed dates, with the product model, where durable teams own business outcomes. He argues projects are slow, costly, and produce…
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 argues that product teams can only be empowered and make good autonomous decisions when they understand the broader context, which starts with a compelling product vision and a clear product strategy. The…
Marty Cagan recommends Stratechery, Ben Thompson's newsletter on tech strategy, as a valuable resource for product managers and leaders. He argues that a key part of product leadership is understanding markets…
Marty Cagan announces the second edition of his book INSPIRED, which he describes as essentially a new work rather than an update. He explains that the field has moved past early Lean Startup and Agile ideas, so the new…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams often conflate empowerment and autonomy, and that the two should be considered separately. Empowerment means a team can choose how to solve a problem, while autonomy means it can…
Marty Cagan argues that the so-called AI productivity paradox, where teams ship faster but outcomes do not improve, is not really a paradox at all. Most organizations use AI to accelerate the old project model, which is…
Marty Cagan argues that many product teams, both in startups and established companies, spend most of their effort capturing value (pricing tests, ad optimization, cost cutting) rather than creating it. Startups often…
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 a new wave of generative AI prototyping tools has been a good development for product discovery, but it has created confusion among product managers who fail to distinguish a prototype from a…
Marty Cagan argues against a common fallacy in the tech industry: that developers only care about building tools for other developers. He contends that most engineers are passionate about solving real problems for real…
Marty Cagan argues that if he could change only one thing about how a product organization works, it would be empowering engineers. Engineers work with enabling technology daily, so they are best placed to spot what is…
Marty Cagan follows up his article on product management theater by arguing that where PM theater exists, product leadership theater usually exists too. Product leaders often blame senior executives, such as non-product…
Marty Cagan notices that several of the strongest product companies, including Apple, Google and Amazon, have very different cultures yet share a hidden common thread: their founders were coached by Bill Campbell, the…
Marty Cagan argues that the current resistance to AI products mirrors the denial that greeted the Internet in the mid-1990s. Back then, many organizations insisted their old Waterfall funding, building, and shipping…
Marty Cagan reviews Reed Hastings' book No Rules Rules and uses Netflix's mantra 'lead with context and not control' to argue for empowering product teams. He recounts Hastings' story of a manager making a seemingly bad…
Marty Cagan argues that beyond the business case for the product model, there is a moral case: empowered teams are happier, more fulfilled, and proud of improving customers' lives or society. He notes that organizations…
Marty Cagan pays tribute to Bruce Williams, a Silicon Valley marketing leader and close friend who died of pancreatic cancer in May 2016. The essay uses Williams's life to explore two topics important to product people…
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 argues that strong product people need both ambition and agency, and that agency depends on ambition: skills alone won't drive action without a desire to improve. He reflects on how some product people…
Marty Cagan argues that established companies with long-standing non-digital value, such as banks, insurers, retailers and media firms, often split product management into a 'Legacy PM' group that owns the core product…
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 companies often confuse product roles, and that one person can legitimately cover more than one role. He focuses on a combination he increasingly recommends: a strong engineering lead or CTO who…
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 the Agile movement had two parts: frequent small releases, and empowering teams to solve problems rather than execute roadmaps. The first change spread easily, but the second threatened…
Marty Cagan profiles eight strong product leaders featured in his new book EMPOWERED, spanning product management, design, engineering, and company leadership. Drawing on years of working alongside them, he sketches how…
Marty Cagan argues that internal products, while worth treating as real products, carry a lower bar on value, usability, feasibility and viability than commercial products. Internal users cannot switch to competitors…