Teresa Torres argues that product trios (PM, designer, engineer) should conduct their own customer discovery interviews rather than outsource them to centralized research, marketing, or BI teams. Centralized research is…
Lenny answers a reader who is joining a team with a history of underperformance, arguing that a turnaround is both risky and a strong career opportunity. He advises setting expectations with the manager early, since…
Marty Cagan argues that team objectives are the mechanism for assigning work to empowered product teams in a way that still executes the company's product strategy. Product leadership chooses which problems matter and…
Marty Cagan argues that empowerment in product teams must be paired with accountability, and that how accountability applies depends on the ambition of the objective. A team that misses a bold "Moon Shot" goal is…
Marty Cagan argues that setting team objectives for a quarter is not enough; product teams must actively track and manage progress throughout the period. He explains that ongoing 'keep the lights on' work can crowd out…
Marty Cagan argues that product organizations focused on team autonomy still need deliberate forms of collaboration around objectives. He describes two patterns: shared objectives, where several teams co-own a goal such…
Cagan argues that while most team objectives should be aspirational, some situations require high-integrity commitments: deliverables with dates leaders can rely on, driven by trade shows, contracts, tax deadlines…
Once leaders assign a problem to a product team, they must also signal how ambitious the team should be in its discovery work. Cagan frames objectives as bets that spread risk across a portfolio, ranging from low-risk…
Cagan argues that once leaders decide which problems product teams should tackle, the mechanics of assigning objectives matter a great deal. Leaders own the decision of which team takes which problem, guided by product…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about building referral programs for marketplaces, drawing on his experience leading supply growth at Airbnb, where the host referral program became the biggest driver of…
Marty Cagan argues that team objectives should empower product teams by assigning them a hard problem to solve rather than a feature to build, along with the strategic context needed to make good decisions. Handing over…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a SaaS founder's question about when a small startup should raise money and start hiring. His core guideline is to wait until product/market fit is found, since hiring before then slows a company…
Marty Cagan explains why he has largely stopped recommending OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to most companies: the technique is simple, but organizations rarely have the structure it needs to work. He argues three…
Marty Cagan argues that once a product strategy is set, leaders cannot simply step back, because no strategy survives contact with reality. Teams will hit dependencies, technical gaps, customer crises, platform…
Cagan argues that once a product strategy is set, leaders face a fork: hand teams features to build (feature teams and roadmaps) or hand them problems to solve (empowered product teams). The difference is whether teams…
Marty Cagan argues that the insights forming the foundation of a product strategy are the hardest but most valuable part of product work, and they cannot be produced by a template or framework. He says strong insights…
Marty Cagan argues that organizations believe they are good at focus but usually chase 20-30 'critical' initiatives when only two or three truly matter. He contrasts this with Pandora's stakeholder-driven prioritization…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader who just sold their startup and is moving into a product manager role without formal PM training. Drawing on his own experience after Localmind was acquired by Airbnb, he admits he was a…
Marty Cagan argues that empowered product teams need hard problems to solve, and product strategy is the discipline of deciding which problems matter. He observes that many companies have plenty of features and projects…
This Product in Practice feature profiles Lisa Orr, a former data scientist turned product manager at Airship, who leads discovery for the orchestration product area with coaching from Teresa Torres. It shows how a…
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…
This is an index post introducing Marty Cagan's series of articles on the manager's role in coaching product managers. Cagan explains that he uses his blog and the product community as a testing ground for draft…
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…
Lenny Rachitsky compiles the most concrete and actionable definitions of product-market fit (PMF) from leading investors, founders, and operators, organized into signals before a product exists and signals after launch…
Marty Cagan argues that ethics deserves its own explicit place in product decisions, proposing a fifth risk alongside value, usability, feasibility and business viability: 'Should we build it?' He notes ethics often…
This edition of Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers two reader questions. First, with input from Jackie Bavaro, it argues that early-career PMs should prioritize shipping wins, learning best practices, building…
Marty Cagan argues that a manager has a large effect on whether a product manager is happy, and that good managers should check in weekly on whether the PM finds her work meaningful, is growing in her career, and has…
Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers two reader questions. The first, with guest Lex Roman, argues that a PM can keep designers and engineers motivated around metrics by involving them in the whole measurement cycle…
Marty Cagan argues that empowered product teams can only make good decisions if they understand the broader business context they operate in. He outlines six layers of strategic context that leaders should share and…
Teresa Torres announces her 2020 priorities in a public annual letter, continuing a tradition started the previous year to focus her work and filter irrelevant requests. Her core focus is refining her Continuous…