Marty Cagan argues that as more companies move toward the product operating model, political dynamics become central to change, and a well-designed pilot team is the key early step. A pilot acts as a low-cost, fast MVP…
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 product management is a series of choices about which problems, customers, and features to pursue, and that personas are one of his favorite tools for making them. A persona is an archetype of an…
Marty Cagan responds to a Product Therapy interview with Shreyas Doshi, which described three product leader archetypes: craftsperson, operator, and visionary. Cagan argues that deep product craft is non-negotiable…
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 shares a curated list of favorite product and leadership mantras he has collected while visiting companies, explaining what each one reveals about good product practice. Many of the quotes are attributed to…
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 as startups grow and split into functional groups, walls form between product, technology, marketing and design, with product-technology being the most damaging. Teams loyal to their function…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams should design for specific personas rather than vague generic users. Using eBay seller tools as an example, he sketches three detailed fictional people with different backgrounds…
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 argues that many teams claiming to be Agile or Lean still operate with a Waterfall mindset, merely adopting the rituals and buzzwords. He identifies three telltale signs: risks deferred to the end…
Marty Cagan responds to a common challenge: why are products like Facebook, Amazon, and Google so successful if they seem poorly designed? He argues that product people often confuse their own tastes with the target…
Marty Cagan reflects on whether product discovery techniques built for software apply to non-technology products. He tested them while writing a book, using customer research, a small group of charter customers…
This FAQ, published by Marty Cagan after his book TRANSFORMED, answers recurring reader objections about moving from feature teams to empowered product teams. It argues that the product manager role changes rather than…
Marty Cagan argues that most product coaches and trainers are steeped in the feature-team model, which is the opposite of what companies need when moving to a true product operating model. He frames a good coach through…
Marty Cagan argues that a common reason transformation efforts fail is structural: large management consultancies and IT outsourcing firms are poorly positioned to drive a shift to the product model. Their people are…
Marty Cagan argues that product discovery depends heavily on judgement, which many product people try to replace with frameworks and templates. He identifies four areas where judgement is required: assessing risk…
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 responds to a critique of the Spotify model of scaled Agile by arguing that the critic overlooks Spotify's business outcomes and Fitbit's decline after adopting the process the critic favored. He contends…
Marty Cagan reflects on witnessing gender-based bias early in his career and argues that avoiding discrimination is not enough; leaders must actively work to counter the lingering effects of past inequities. He focuses…
Marty Cagan describes a proposal from Jeff Patton to replace the traditional product roadmap with an "opportunity backlog." The core problem is that roadmap items are often treated as commitments, yet genuine product…
Marty Cagan argues that removing usability problems and bugs only gets a product to the absence of pain, which is not the same as delighting users. Great products cause pleasure, sometimes from raw value, but often from…
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…
Marty Cagan argues that the pandemic's reduction in commuting gave many people uninterrupted solo time, such as long walks, that is valuable for deep thinking about hard problems. He describes his own experience writing…
Marty Cagan clarifies a terminology problem in the product community: many people use "product leader" interchangeably with "product manager" or "product owner," which causes unnecessary confusion. He argues the two…
Marty Cagan argues that 'product' is unclear in Internet companies, where software is intangible and large sites are split into many smaller products largely for internal organizational reasons. He proposes defining…
Marty Cagan, author of product management writing, sets out the personal beliefs that underpin his work and teaching: faith in technology, leadership, honesty, people, giving back, and continuous improvement. He argues…
Marty Cagan uses General Patton's quote about telling people what to do rather than how to do it to argue that product managers should specify outcomes, not implementations. He identifies two failure modes: customers…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams relying on long, pre-negotiated roadmaps repeatedly fail to deliver business results because of two unavoidable realities. First, at least half of ideas won't work, whether…
Marty Cagan reflects on his personal regrets from coaching companies through product transformations, prompted by a reader's question about whether every transformation in the book TRANSFORMED succeeded. He admits that…