Marty Cagan argues that prototyping is not one thing: teams often narrow the term to whichever prototype type they first encountered, and then misuse it. He lays out four main flavors: feasibility prototypes that answer…
Marty Cagan and Stacey Langer argue that the product model, though born in commercial product companies, fits government technology work because government also aims to create value and achieve outcomes, just measured…
Marty Cagan argues that a product succeeds only when it is solved simultaneously for the customer, the business, and the technology, which he frames as a multiplicative equation: if any one factor is zero, the product…
Marty Cagan argues that real collaboration in an empowered product team is very different from how many product managers assume they work. It is not consensus, democracy, artifact-producing requirement handoffs, or…
Marty Cagan addresses the common question of how organizations move from feature teams to empowered product teams. He argues that Agile delivery methods alone are insufficient and that transformation depends first on…
Marty Cagan shares a chapter from his book EMPOWERED, written by SVPG partner Jon Moore, describing the digital transformation at The Guardian during a period of industry crisis. Facing collapsing advertising revenue…
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 the most important thing a product manager can do is get ideas in front of real target users, since that is where real learning happens. He addresses two kinds of gatekeepers who try to stand in…
Marty Cagan answers the most common objections people raise against the idea of empowered engineers, the engineers who take part in product discovery rather than only building what they are handed. He argues that the…
Marty Cagan argues that managers of product managers must actively develop their people, since talented PMs will leave for other companies if they lack growth. He presents a gap-analysis skills assessment as the…
Marty Cagan argues that the weekly one-on-one is the foundation of coaching product managers, and that most managers either never run it well or treat it as optional. The 1:1 exists primarily to build a PM's competence…
Marty Cagan describes the most common confusions he sees in product teams, drawn from a dinner conversation with product leaders who recognized the same patterns. He argues that product teams should discover solutions…
Marty Cagan argues that moving to the product model rarely requires a reorganization, because org design is largely orthogonal to whether a company adopts product principles. He describes the two dominant org models…
Marty Cagan argues that when product managers find themselves working from home, they should treat the unexpected free time as an opportunity rather than a loss. Most PMs struggle to find time for the deep, high-value…
Marty Cagan argues that economic downturns, while painful, can be a productive period for product teams and companies that know how to use them. Beyond the defensive measure of cutting costs to extend runway, he…
Marty Cagan argues that most companies fail to get results from product teams not because teams lack discovery skills, but because they are not truly empowered. He contrasts teams that serve the business with strong…
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…
Marty Cagan argues that most discovery work needs little planning, but larger efforts such as multi-team initiatives call for deliberate framing before diving in. He describes two goals: aligning the team on the…
Marty Cagan describes a discovery framing technique for larger product efforts, such as redesigns, where a simple opportunity assessment may not convey enough value. He builds on Amazon's 'working backwards' practice of…
Marty Cagan revisits his earlier argument that the product manager should also be the product owner, admitting he made a strategic mistake by treating the two titles as synonyms. Many people who took short product owner…
Marty Cagan argues that the word "beta" has become so ambiguous that its meaning depends on what a team is trying to accomplish. He describes four distinct uses: a QA phase handled with real users, a gentle deployment…
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…
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…
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 as companies grow, product organizations often drift into serving internal stakeholders, documenting requirements, mediating conflicts, and allocating developer time, which crowds out customer…
Teresa Torres interviews Hope Gurion, Chief Product Officer at CareerBuilder, about how she built product management, UX, and analytics functions at a company that previously lacked them. Gurion describes shifting her…
Marty Cagan argues that strong product organizations are built on teams of missionaries, people who are engaged, understand the business context, and empathize with customers, rather than mercenaries who simply execute…
Marty Cagan argues that the biggest risk facing most startups and new products is not market risk or business-model risk but solution risk: whether the team can find an approach customers actually choose to buy and use…
Marty Cagan extends his earlier point that product teams must learn fast in discovery while still delivering with confidence, arguing that the balance depends heavily on company culture. He lists the traits of a strong…
Marty Cagan argues that enterprise software companies sometimes need to become consumer or small-business companies, whether because enterprise markets are saturated, investors demand bigger markets, or leaders tire of…