“Trying to adopt the product operating model? One of the keys to success is remembering that it’s not just about product teams—it’s an organization-wide transformation. This is why Hope Gurion and I have been doing a series on organizational change. In our years as product coaches,”
Marty Cagan explains that his upcoming book TRANSFORMED needs a name for the way the best tech companies work, and he tentatively settles on the 'product operating model' or 'product model.' He notes that the industry…
Teresa Torres explains the product operating model, a set of first principles popularized by Marty Cagan, which focuses on achieving customer and business outcomes rather than shipping outputs. She contrasts it with the…
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…
Molly Graham introduces the Waterline Model, a diagnostic for underperforming teams that checks four levels in order: structure, dynamics, interpersonal, and individual. Her core argument is that many team problems are…
Cagan extends his series on product team autonomy by examining how code ownership interacts with it. When companies split a codebase among product teams, one team's changes often touch code another team owns, creating…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams often conflate empowerment and autonomy, and that the two should be considered separately. Empowerment means a team can choose how to solve a problem, while autonomy means it can…
Cagan describes a role that appears in large matrixed companies: the business owner, who represents a business unit (by geography, device, or function) that a central product organization serves. He argues this role can…
Chris Jones argues that organizational transformation, like product development, should be rolled out incrementally rather than all at once. Because people adopt change at different speeds, a sweeping rollout can…
Marty Cagan argues that a company growing rapidly from startup to large organization faces stress, and that practices and people who drove early success can later hold it back. He suggests leaders who excel at startups…
Marty Cagan argues that if he could change only one thing about how a product organization works, it would be empowering engineers. Engineers work with enabling technology daily, so they are best placed to spot what is…
Cagan and Moore argue that 'transformation' is often described with labels like Agile or product-led, which fail to capture what actually changes. They propose defining transformation by three concrete shifts: how a…
Jon Moore, an SVPG partner, argues that the principles behind empowered, outcome-focused product teams are not new and not tech-specific. He points to Ingvar Kamprad's 1976 essay 'Testament of a Furniture Dealer' as…
Marty Cagan follows up on his critique of SAFe, the scaled-agile framework, by answering reader questions. He argues that process choices are really culture choices, and that adopting a heavy framework signals top-down…
This podcast episode argues that organizational change is exhausting and that individuals usually waste energy trying to fix their companies' people and processes. Teresa Torres and Petra Wille describe a three-part…
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…
Teresa Torres argues that a company's staffing choices reveal its real values. Most companies say they prioritize customer love and data-driven decisions, yet employ far fewer product managers, designers, researchers…
The post compares general management (GM), functional, and hybrid org models, explaining how company stage, how close a North Star metric sits to revenue, and how critical the end-to-end customer journey is shape the…
Marty Cagan argues that company culture, defined by how a company treats its employees, customers, and partners, directly shapes how product teams work and what they build. He suggests a company's treatment of employees…
Marty Cagan argues that as companies grow, product organizations often drift into serving internal stakeholders, documenting requirements, mediating conflicts, and allocating developer time, which crowds out customer…
Cagan argues that companies often ask how they can copy the product management model of Google or Apple, but this usually backfires. Those models fit their specific founders, cultures, and products, and Apple's in…