Marty Cagan asks whether product discovery applies to feature teams, which are handed a list of features rather than problems to solve. At a simple level, discovery is irrelevant there because the solution is already…
“It’s no secret that engineers can be hesitant to participate in product trios. They might feel anxious about taking on tasks that are new to them and outside their regular routine at work, like speaking directly with customers. They might fear that any time not spent coding is time”
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that product transformations stall when teams are trained in continuous discovery but leaders keep managing through feature requests and roadmaps. Training leaders first is presented…
Lenny Rachitsky shares high-level structures from 20+ large companies' product management career ladders, including titles by level, evaluated competencies, and where IC and manager tracks split. He argues career…
Cagan argues that product people operate in the idea business, and that depending only on one's own ideas severely limits potential. The core lesson is to actively seek out the smartest people across the company, since…
Melissa Perri recounts how her consulting work began by sneaking product management into companies under buzzwords like agile and digital, since 'product management' itself got doors shut. Executives' stated reason for…
Cagan argues that product decisions in most companies stall because the right people are never in the same room, and proposes a Product Council: a small cross-functional group of senior managers whose sole job is to…
Teresa Torres argues that remote teams are becoming the norm, and that companies focus too much on their benefits while underestimating the challenges. Drawing on her experience with distributed graduate-school teams…
Mihika Kapoor, who helped build FigJam and launched Figma Slides, shares seven lessons for keeping a startup mindset inside a large company. The core argument is that speed, prototypes, open progress-sharing, strong…
Marty Cagan argues that when companies grow, boards often push founders to hand over leadership to professional managers, but the stronger path is to coach founders into strong product leaders. He contrasts two failure…
Marty Cagan argues that product managers should learn the underlying principles behind their practices, since techniques change constantly while principles endure and let people judge new methods. He recommends Ray…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader struggling with frequent reorgs, arguing they can accelerate careers and offering five tactical moves to position yourself for bigger roles. He then brings in executive coach Katherine…
Marty Cagan argues that a product manager's core job is discovering products that are valuable, usable and feasible, and that engineering must be involved early to achieve feasibility. Waiting until engineering sees a…
Marty Cagan describes a common failure mode: once a product has customers, the same development team is pulled between urgent fixes and new product work, so both slow to a crawl and everyone becomes frustrated…
Marty Cagan notices that several of the strongest product companies, including Apple, Google and Amazon, have very different cultures yet share a hidden common thread: their founders were coached by Bill Campbell, the…
Marty Cagan argues that many product releases fail because the product manager role is poorly defined in companies, and that this is often the root cause of wasted release cycles. He defines the product manager as the…
Marty Cagan argues that the real alternative to dedicated Agile coaches is competent line management: engineering, product, and design managers coaching their people in hands-on skills. He contrasts a 'Team Red' that…
Marty Cagan reviews Reed Hastings' book No Rules Rules and uses Netflix's mantra 'lead with context and not control' to argue for empowering product teams. He recounts Hastings' story of a manager making a seemingly bad…
Marty Cagan argues that 'product' is unclear in Internet companies, where software is intangible and large sites are split into many smaller products largely for internal organizational reasons. He proposes defining…
Marty Cagan argues that while remote product teams can deliver nearly as well as co-located ones, discovery and innovation suffer most when people work apart. He frames discovery as the core challenge, since creativity…