Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's request for real-world 1-Pagers and PRDs, explaining why good examples are scarce and listing traits of effective documents: problem focus, clear success criteria, just-enough…
Lenny Rachitsky explains how mission, vision, strategy, goals, roadmap, and tasks connect, working from the top down and showing where to begin. He illustrates each layer with well-known company examples and uses a…
“My goodness. If I see another slide with a 2005-era SDLC diagram sprinkled with little AI logos and a bunch of words suggesting “the bottleneck has moved” or that this has all been figured out, when in reality every week there’s something new like Loop Engineering, or _____________.”
The post introduces DRICE, a two-stage prioritization method for product and growth teams. It starts with RICE scoring (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) to build a shortlist, then applies a deeper 30-minute DRICE…
Marty Cagan argues that the common company process of taking executive or stakeholder ideas, building business cases, prioritizing feature roadmaps, and handing requirements down a line from product to design to…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams should not commit to specific features by specific dates, because product work is inherently unpredictable and date-based roadmaps tend to create chaos, broken trust, and wasted…
Teresa Torres argues that product builders make constant decisions, but human judgment is error-prone, so teams should deliberately design decision-making processes. She identifies eight critical decisions in building…
Lenny Rachitsky reflects on seven years at Airbnb, from early engineer to PM, distilling lessons on building a company. He argues that strong culture and values create competitive advantage in hiring, speed, and…
Cagan argues that feature-list roadmaps often tell teams what to build without explaining the underlying problem, producing waste. He proposes replacing them with shared context: a product vision describing the…
An in-depth look at how Notion builds product, drawn from an interview with its Chief Product and Technology Officer. It covers planning cadences, a four-stage product review process, the small size of the PM team, a…
Teresa Torres responds to readers who want to adopt outcome-based product management but face obstacles in their organizations. She identifies four common barriers: fast development cycles that leave no time to evaluate…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers often fall into a throughput mindset, filling backlogs and keeping engineers busy rather than driving outcomes. She identifies three recurring failures: not starting from a…
Teresa Torres contrasts two product managers: Jim, who is absorbed in delivery tasks and makes all the team's decisions, and Sally, who has time for customer discovery because her team shares the problem-solving load…
Product managers keep coming back to Aha! with the same request: "This prototype is great—now I want it to actually integrate with other systems and do real things." Chris (Aha!) explains how that moment—prototype meets production—reshaped their roadmap. Instead of handing the app to an engineer…
Lenny Rachitsky profiles how Miro builds product, drawing on an interview with its CPO Varun Parmar. The post covers Miro's cross-functional AMPED structure, its three-year vision and annual strategy process, a…
John Cutler argues that teams often prioritize better when they pay attention to the underlying tensions they observe and act on daily, rather than focusing mainly on the specific items being prioritized. Those items…
Marty Cagan argues that product managers who spend their time prioritizing a laundry list of feature requests are working on the wrong problem. A feature-request roadmap pushes unvalidated features into the plan, skips…
Marty Cagan argues that while Lean and Agile are often criticized, their core principles remain valuable, even though most companies practice them poorly. He observes that the best product teams have already moved…
Melissa Perri argues that when several product teams must deliver a shared cross-team integration, companies need a deliberate coordination model or the work stalls. She describes two strategies: dual responsibility…
Teresa Torres argues that the most important product decision is what to build next, and that common scoring spreadsheets built on customer demand, build time, and stakeholder needs lead to mediocre products. She…