Marty Cagan and Bob Baxley argue that in the Generative AI era, strong product managers and product designers become more essential, not less, but only when those roles are defined by their specific, demanding skill…
Marty Cagan argues that Apple's repeated success in redefining consumer markets comes from product discipline rather than marketing. Written around the iPhone's debut, the essay contends that Apple gets the ordering of…
“Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts What makes an event truly unforgettable — and what can product teams learn from it? In this episode, Teresa sits down with Petra Wille to explore how Petra and her co-organizer Arne design experiences (not just events) at Product at Heart and”
Marty Cagan reflects on his first weeks with the original iPhone to extract product lessons. He argues that breakthrough products cannot come from focus groups or pundits, since users only describe incremental…
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 high-fidelity prototypes are one of the most powerful tools for discovering a product that is valuable, usable and feasible. He lists ten benefits, including testing ideas with users before major…
This episode of Just Now Possible features the founders of Banani, a canvas-first AI product designer aimed at giving solo founders and small teams access to tasteful UX. The conversation covers how the company grew…
Teresa Torres interviews Laura Klein, who moved from interaction design and user research into a product role at a small company. Laura argues the transition felt natural because good designers and researchers already…
Cagan argues the traditional product spec is broken: it takes too long to write, is rarely read, leaves hard questions unresolved, and gives false comfort that the product is on track. He proposes replacing it with a…
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 reviews Ken Kocienda's memoir Creative Selection, told from the perspective of an engineer who spent about 15 years at Apple and served as tech lead for key efforts, most notably the original iPhone…
Julie Zhuo writes a letter to her 11-year-old daughter about the value of struggling through hard work when AI can make almost anything effortless. The piece frames the problem as a question of cultivating the eye…
Cagan argues that the main purpose of prototyping is to discover a successful solution, not to ship a product. Recent gen-AI prototyping tools have sharply cut the cost of live-data prototypes, changing the economics…
Marty Cagan argues that enterprise software is in poor shape: products are often hard to use, don't work out of the box, and force customers into costly professional services. He contends that good product management…
Teresa Torres marks the one-year anniversary of Steve Jobs's death by reflecting on her mixed feelings about him. She credits Jobs with an extraordinary record of beautiful, usable products and a rare dedication to…
Teresa Torres argues that API teams need product discovery because customer-facing APIs are products, and gaps in them cost adoption. She identifies six recurring usability problems developers hit when learning a new…
Ken Rudin introduces ARIA, a repeatable framework for growing a product by increasing engagement with features it already has rather than launching new ones. He argues that most growth comes from incremental…
Teresa Torres uses a product manager and designer dilemma to argue that teams waste time designing a whole near-term vision upfront, because their assumptions about being right are usually wrong. She contends that…
Teresa Torres recounts a early-career design review in which a client dismissed her work as horrible and asked to reuse an existing homepage. Her manager defused the clash by asking her to walk through her reasoning…
Marty Cagan argues that the single most valuable thing a product manager can do is run face-to-face user tests on prototypes or live products. Each test has two parts in sequence: a usability check to see whether users…
Colin Matthews explains how product teams can move beyond individual AI prototyping by building shared component libraries, using baselines and forks, and matching prototype fidelity to each stage of the product…
Marty Cagan argues that product people, despite often coming from analytical backgrounds, work fundamentally in the realm of emotion and psychology. He observes that people buy and use products mainly for emotional…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that innovation is a means rather than a goal: it matters only when it serves customers better. Using the history of the login flow, from passwords to single sign-on, Slack's magic…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers and designers should not split the work cleanly into 'PM defines the problem, designer owns the solution.' Problem definition and solution generation form a two-way feedback…