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 argues that software buyers face an overwhelming marketplace, with tens of thousands of apps and thousands of solutions per category, so simply building a product no longer guarantees adoption. To win…
“I often get asked for book recommendations related to product management. This is a hard question to answer. There are a lot of great books out there. But I think the most important aspect of being a good product manager requires working from the perspective of the whole business. It'”
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…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about taking a marketplace business international, drawing on advice from two former Airbnb leaders who built its European business. The piece argues that expansion…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams should start by defining what success looks like, since a clear goal is the ultimate measure that makes alignment and decisions easier. She warns against drowning in dozens of…
Marty Cagan revisits The Lost Interview with Steve Jobs to answer a question he has struggled with: why do so many product companies remain weak when the best ones are the most valuable in the world? Rather than…
Marty Cagan argues that product managers are fundamentally in the business of managing risk, and that playing it safe by only adding small features and fixes is often the riskiest choice over time. Because innovation…
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…
Teresa Torres recounts a 2008 product story in which her team at an alumni community startup fixed on an engineer's Google Maps idea while the real problem was unwanted spam. She argues teams fall in love with their…
Sonja Martin, a product manager at tails.com, describes how her cross-functional team repeatedly refined their desired outcome. They began with 90-day retention, a useful North Star but too lagging and noisy to guide…
Marty Cagan argues that for product companies at scale, he knows of no reliable alternative to strong product leadership. He explains that founders who act as head of product eventually stop scaling, and that the common…
In a fireside chat at the Product at Heart Leadership Forum, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille discuss how product leaders can help teams adopt continuous discovery. Torres frames discovery as the work of deciding what to…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader question about how Airbnb balanced outcome-oriented thinking with design and engineering requirements that don't directly drive a target metric. He argues that outcome-oriented…
Cagan argues that beyond empowered teams hitting measurable outcomes, the best product companies also pursue a harder-to-define standard of excellence: desirability, delight, or 'spirit.' He acknowledges the tension…
Teresa Torres argues that drawing maps and visual models sharpens thinking, and that the Business Model Canvas spread because it makes a business model visible on one page. She draws on cognitive psychology, notably…
Teresa Torres traces how product discovery has evolved over roughly two decades, from long requirements documents and shipping flops like Windows ME toward experiment-driven, customer-centered practice. She argues that…
Teresa Torres wraps a 3-month blog series inspired by Chip and Dan Heath's book Decisive, connecting its decision-making research to product work. Her posts argue that product teams should be prepared to be wrong, ask…
Marty Cagan responds to a CTO's question about whether a strong product designer and technical lead still need a product manager, arguing the PM's contribution is often invisible or poorly done. He frames the discussion…
Teresa Torres profiles Thomas Groendal, a senior PM at Bluestone Analytics, whose intelligence-analysis products (DarkBlue and DarkPursuit) operate on the dark web with few users, privacy restrictions, and very long…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion continue their series arguing there is no single right way to run product discovery, while holding teams to shared principles. This session covers two principles of continuous discovery…
Marty Cagan examines what business incubators, from independent startup accelerators to corporate labs like HP Labs and Yahoo's Brickhouse, teach about turning product ideas into successful companies or products. He…
This excerpt from Andrew Chen's book argues that networked products should first build a small, self-sustaining 'atomic network' before expanding. The atomic network is the smallest unit that can stand on its own, and…
Marty Cagan argues that empowered product teams depend not on less leadership but on better leadership, and that moving to empowerment is far harder for product leaders than most expect. He splits the role into…