“Continuous Discovery Habits turns five this year. And to celebrate we are reading the book together. Each month, I am releasing an in-depth reading guide that includes: * The chapters we will be reading * A preview of the most important concepts we'll be learning about * Short videos you can”
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 many product teams delay validating their ideas with real customers until it is too late, and that this delay is a common cause of disastrous product results. He notes that people often agree in…
Marty Cagan contrasts strong product teams with weak ones, drawing on years of working with both top technology companies and struggling ones. He argues the differences are not minor but span leadership behavior, team…
Teresa Torres shares four examples from coach Ellen Juhlin of using in-app surveys to sustain customer touchpoints as part of continuous discovery. Across different products, Ellen tried a Mixpanel pop-up, an onboarding…
Marty Cagan argues that many product teams spend their discovery effort on usability and performance fixes when the real problem is that users do not see why the product is worth using at all. Polishing a workflow or…
Marty Cagan describes the most common confusions he sees in product teams, drawn from a dinner conversation with product leaders who recognized the same patterns. He argues that product teams should discover solutions…
This podcast episode, hosted by Teresa Torres with guest Petra Wille, examines whether product discovery differs fundamentally between B2B and B2C products. The hosts argue the core principles are largely consistent…
Marty Cagan argues that product managers who are forbidden from talking directly with users should push hard to change that policy, and if they cannot, should consider leaving for a company where they can do their job…
Lily Smith, Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, describes how she set out to add deliberate practice to product learning after realizing that reading and talks were not enough to change how she and her peers work…
Marty Cagan argues that the common belief that great products come from listening to customers is a myth for technology products, because customers often cannot imagine what is possible or what they want until they see…
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 follows up on an earlier list of product manager problem areas with five more common pitfalls. He argues that many teams play defense, acting risk-averse and protecting ground instead of moving forward…
Sho Kuwamoto, Figma's VP of Product, argues that Figma's success comes from putting customer needs first, a philosophy built into its culture from the early private beta. He describes how customer support became…
Marty Cagan argues that product work has two distinct modes: the project model, focused on output from predefined roadmaps, and the product model, focused on outcomes. As delivery costs have collapsed with AI, the…
Teresa Torres profiles how Edwin Yuen, a product designer at The Times London, uses Vistaly to build opportunity solution trees for his puzzle-focused squad. The piece presents a practical, tool-specific walkthrough of…
Teresa Torres profiles Chi Phan, a senior PM who was asked to evaluate whether her company should build an API to automate a manual order-fulfillment process between consumers, vendors and her company. Chi used internal…
Teresa Torres describes how she used her own continuous discovery methods to shape and test the book that became Continuous Discovery Habits. Rather than writing the whole book upfront and hoping it landed, she turned…
Marty Cagan responds to a debate sparked by Don Norman's essay arguing that big societal innovations are driven by technology first and needs later, which Norman frames against heavy upfront user research. Cagan says…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams should stop framing their work as gathering and documenting requirements, since most so-called requirements are really constraints. He proposes defining products along two…
Cagan argues that product teams face two simultaneous goals: learning fast through discovery about what customers need, and delivering robust, scalable, production-quality software they can release with confidence…
Teresa Torres argues that many product managers are so consumed by delivery work (grooming backlogs, triaging bugs, handling schedule slips) that they lack time for discovery, the work of figuring out what to build. Ad…