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, writing with Chuck Geiger, argues that a product manager's success depends heavily on the working relationship with the head of product development, often called the CTO. The essay defines the scope of that…
Marty Cagan argues that product organizations focused on team autonomy still need deliberate forms of collaboration around objectives. He describes two patterns: shared objectives, where several teams co-own a goal such…
Christian Idiodi argues that hiring experienced product people is not enough, because even strong hires lack the company-specific context, decision-making knowledge, and relationships needed to succeed. Standard…
Marty Cagan addresses a common objection from non-tech companies: that the product operating model doesn't apply to them. He argues that being a 'tech company' is about how a business chooses to power its offering with…
Cagan and Moore argue that moving to an empowered product-team model is a major cultural shift that must start with senior leaders, who still have legitimate needs to run the business. Their answer is not to simply step…
Marty Cagan argues that Hewlett-Packard was Silicon Valley's greatest product company because its founders built a culture and structure for continually breeding new products and businesses. By splitting growing…
Marty Cagan argues that Microsoft has managed to keep high staff quality during rapid growth, something most tech companies struggle with, and that its recruiting engine is a real competitive advantage. He describes his…
Marty Cagan argues there is a wide gap between how the best product companies work and how the majority of companies work, and that many people don't realize how different the two worlds are. He notes that practitioners…
Cagan argues that the 'Business Analyst' role, common in IT and custom-software shops where it gathers requirements for developers, becomes a problem when transplanted into a product organization. There it duplicates…
Marty Cagan argues that large companies are structurally risk averse and rely on shared, matrixed resources, which makes getting a product designed, built, and launched difficult. Rather than fighting the culture, he…
Julie Zhuo's paid essay argues that an AI transformation cannot be ordered into existence from the top down. It presents a ten-step guide to leading an AI shift in a way that preserves care for people and their sense of…
This piece profiles Datasite, formerly Merrill Corporation, a financial-document printer that had to reinvent itself as cloud demand grew. The company was slow, hierarchical and risk-averse, so it reframed its culture…
Marty Cagan and Jeff Patton argue that product teams should be judged by the outcomes they generate rather than the output they ship. The article offers a practical checklist of questions to diagnose how strong a…
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…
“Early in my product career, I wore many hats. I conducted research, analyzed data, sketched interfaces and wireframes, wrote requirements, coordinated releases, answered support questions, and even, shudder, wrote some code. Some of that was empowering. Some of it was amateur hour. But it was all bundled into the loose idea of “product management.””
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…
Marty Cagan argues that the foundation of a strong empowered product team is unencumbered, direct access to four constituencies: customers and users, product data, business stakeholders, and engineers. He explains that…
Hiten Shah argues that leaders usually try to engineer culture directly, which rarely works. Instead, culture emerges from the environment (systems, cadences, unwritten rules), and the environment itself is shaped by…
The post answers a founder's question about hiring difficulty by synthesizing advice from several early-stage founders who consistently attract strong talent. It argues that hiring success comes from a compelling…
Teresa Torres argues that job titles and disciplinary boundaries matter for advancing each craft, since naming skills lets people debate, invest in, and share them. However, she warns that the same labels become harmful…
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 and Elias Lieberich describe how the product model shows up at Google, a company with nine products that each exceed one billion monthly users. The article frames the model around three parts: leaders…
This is an index page from Marty Cagan's SVPG site introducing a series of articles on how a company can transform from merely adequate to truly excellent at product work. It groups the articles into themes…