Inspired by Git diff, Teresa Torres started simple: compare the input tree to the output tree and generate a change set. Then she learned the same pair of trees can produce multiple change sets—and only one tells the real story. A semantic merge means something very different from a delete plus…
John Cutler introduces a leadership archetype he calls 'The Standard-Setter', a manager who is skilled at advancing their own career while misreading pressure as motivation. The core belief is that everyone has another…
Most mid-career product people who are doing reasonably well make 2 implicit assumptions that affect their quality of life: 1. the ceiling of key product skills is just an inch higher than where they are now (i.e. they’re basically already at the ceiling) 2. the point of any upskilling is to get a…
From coaching 100s of people over the years on career decisions, LinkedIn Envy and the Impact Lie are the root cause of many career regrets of otherwise-smart people. How to avoid such regrets? As with many such situations, the knowledge is the cure:
This is also true in tech careers. A lot of people I speak with are successful by every conventional metric, but they find it difficult to decide what to do next, in their career and their life.
Teresa Torres wants to believe every product team does careful synthesis after each customer interview. The reality? It's hard, so teams give up and grab the two or three things they remember most. "We're not competing with making good synthesis faster. We're competing with making shallow synthesis…
What happens when you hand your opportunity solution tree to an AI? Vistaly rebuilt its entire product to find out—and the agents were the easy part. In this episode of Just Now Possible, Teresa Torres talks with Matt O'Connell (Co-Founder and CEO), CP Dehli (Co-Founder), and Steve Klein…
Shreyas Doshi announces a new resource: a playlist of 23 candid video answers to career questions and dilemmas submitted by readers. The announcement frames the content as blunt and practical, aimed at ambitious…
If it is useful to know, this private playlist provides deep, super-candid answers for the following 23 questions, with 1 video for each question: What signals do you look for that indicate a PM is ready to be promoted to the Director level? How do you get better at storytelling? How do you decide…
This podcast episode follows Vistaly, an opportunity solution tree (OST) software company, as it rebuilt its product around AI-generated interview snapshots and an agentic workflow that drafts and updates trees from…
Product Hunt's doing something new today. Years ago we talked about adding community-driven changelog. Now with agents, the user request/bug report is the start of the prompt.
John Cutler outlines ten career traps that thoughtful people, including capable product and tech professionals, tend to fall into. The core argument is that good intentions and strong work ethic can quietly steer…
🎙️Unpacking Innovation Is innovation the goal — or just a byproduct of solving customer problems well? In this episode of All Things Product, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack one of the most misused words in product: "innovation." Teresa makes the case that chasing novelty for its own sake…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that innovation is a means rather than a goal: it matters only when it serves customers better. Using the history of the login flow, from passwords to single sign-on, Slack's magic…
Marty Cagan argues that the current trend of cutting managers in favor of pure individual-contributor builders is a temporary phase rather than the future. He restates the principle that experts lead experts: effective…
John Cutler argues that AI tools remove not only wasteful friction but also 'positive friction': the productive struggle, debate, and slow sense-making that builds shared understanding and sound judgment in product…
4 tests any personal AI needs to pass to go big: 1. The mom test 2. The spare key test 3. The putting-it-off test 4. The bored-in-line test ...and my review of how @Muse does across each of them! Buckle up with a coffee and a snack, cuz this one goes deep.
Julie Zhuo reflects on Muse, a consumer AI agent she believes could actually change people's everyday habits. The essay, which is paywalled, argues that a few specific design choices explain why personal AI might…
🎙️Trash Can Tracking What if the ideas you throw away tell you more about the health of your product process than the ones you ship? In this episode of All Things Product, Petra Wille introduces trash can tracking — a deceptively simple technique for making discovery work visible. By adding trash…
This podcast episode introduces "trash can tracking," a technique where teams place trash can symbols on discovery and delivery boards to make the work they deliberately discard as visible as the work they ship. Host…
"It can feel like you are the lone champion pushing for change in your organization." That's why we are reading Continuous Discovery Habits together throughout 2026. 📚 The book turns five this year and many of you have bought and read it. But reading isn't the same as doing. So we are reading…
This reading guide kicks off a monthly book club celebrating five years of Continuous Discovery Habits, focused this month on Chapter 10, 'Testing Assumptions.' The guide frames the chapter as a bridge between…
Product managers keep coming back to Aha! with the same request: "This prototype is great—now I want it to actually integrate with other systems and do real things." Chris (Aha!) explains how that moment—prototype meets production—reshaped their roadmap. Instead of handing the app to an engineer…
John Cutler questions the usefulness of personality and strength tests in the workplace. He notes they make for entertaining conversation and can feel uncannily accurate, but seldom improve everyday collaboration. He…
The supermarket shelf used to hold maybe 1,000 SKUs. Now it can hold 10,000, because AI makes it just as easy to build the wrong thing as the right one. Brian (Aha!) argues this is exactly where product managers earn their keep: strategy and discovery decide what deserves a spot on the shelf…
Customers describe the problem right in front of them—not their wildest dreams. That's the trap Chris (Aha!) sees teams fall into during discovery. "It's very difficult for them to imagine that you might deliver their wildest dreams." The real skill in product discovery is extrapolation: taking…
What does it take to build an AI app builder specifically for product managers—not engineers—inside an already crowded market? In this episode of Just Now Possible, Teresa Torres talks with Brian De Haaff (CEO and Co-Founder), Chris Waters (CTO and Co-Founder), and Sarah Moisan-Thomas (Senior…
Julie Zhuo's paid essay looks at playful, seemingly pointless things people build with AI when no one is tracking the hours or demanding a business case, such as an unusual bird display, a talking phone, and a game…