Marty Cagan explains where the term "product discovery" came from and why he chose it. He argues that software has always faced two core problems: figuring out the right product, and then building it right, which he…
Lenny answers a reader question on how to split effort across conversion levers (focus, motivation, friction) and which tends to pay off most. He shares rules of thumb such as starting wide, mining past wins, and mixing…
Melissa Perri argues that product leaders should deliberately invest in "the product of you" and plan their career path toward product leadership. Beyond building core skills, aspiring leaders need to decide what kind…
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…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader who must deliver bad news after inheriting a six-month onboarding overhaul that performed worse on metrics than the old flow. He argues the key is imagining you are the decision-maker…
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…
Melissa Perri describes how a typical remote staff meeting can waste the chance to connect and align a team, and argues that remote work mainly amplifies existing meeting problems. She interviews product leaders at…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams are often held responsible for business outcomes such as revenue, margin, or churn, which they cannot directly control. Business outcomes are lagging indicators that only reveal…
Lenny Rachitsky surveys how major consumer apps acquired their first 1,000 users, drawing on founder interviews, books, and public accounts from companies like Tinder, Uber, Dropbox, Pinterest, and Airbnb. He distills…
A Q&A post offering advice for someone becoming a startup's first product manager. Drawing on interviews with people who held that role at well-known companies, it covers when to make the first PM hire and what the job…
Lenny Rachitsky argues that a product leader's core job is aligning everyone on the same direction, and that goals are the tool for this. He places goals in a chain from mission to vision to strategy to goals to…
Marty Cagan responds to a critique of the Spotify model of scaled Agile by arguing that the critic overlooks Spotify's business outcomes and Fitbit's decline after adopting the process the critic favored. He contends…
Lenny Rachitsky lays out a framework for setting team and company goals, placing goals between strategy and roadmap as the way to measure whether strategy is working. He covers the traits of a good goal, how to pick a…
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 when looking for a product job, the most important factor is not the company's name but the manager you would report to. Before leaving a current feature-team role, he suggests first trying to…
Lenny Rachitsky shares five practical time-management tactics for product managers, who often lack clear deadlines and drown in shallow work. He argues for scheduling protected deep-work blocks, keeping a trusted to-do…
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…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader question on turning existing website traffic into customers, arguing that conversion work is one of the highest-return investments a growth team can make once acquisition channels are…
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…
This Product in Practice piece follows the Simply Business product team as they adopted continuous discovery with coaching from Teresa Torres. Their first chosen opportunity, late customer payments, was a real pain…
Lenny Rachitsky announces that his product newsletter, started as a side project after leaving Airbnb, is becoming a paid subscription business. Paid subscribers will get weekly, more in-depth editions, priority answers…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader question about growth and retention during the 2020 coronavirus downturn by compiling advice from growth operators, investors, and HBR. The core argument is that founders should first…
Marty Cagan argues that the gap between the best product companies and the rest comes from a misunderstanding of technology's role. He recalls Marc Andreessen's warning that software is eating the world and notes that…
Melissa Perri argues that product leaders planning a company's next phase should survey a standard set of growth strategies rather than fixate on a single path. She organizes 16 options around three business objectives…
Melissa Perri shares advice gathered from experienced operators on what product leaders should prioritize during the COVID-19 crisis. Her core argument is that survival comes first: preserve cash, shift the roadmap…
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…
Lenny answers a reader whose startup grew to four PMs and who worries the team is drifting out of sync. He argues a PM team meeting can be one of the most valuable recurring meetings, but only if it has a clear purpose…
Teresa Torres argues that the belief that product teams must be co-located is outdated, since many successful companies already run fully remote and global teams, and modern digital tools now provide most of the…
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…
Product teams often face a flood of feature requests from support and sales, and it is hard to tell which ones deserve engineering time. Perri argues that a single question, asking how much revenue a request will…