Lenny Rachitsky relaunches his dormant newsletter as an advice column on growth, product, and leadership, built from reader questions he previously answered privately or on Twitter. The first installment answers three…
Teresa Torres profiles Rachel Allen, a product leader who builds new business lines inside large companies such as Allstate's Arity and HERE Maps. Rachel argues that corporate size is an advantage: existing assets…
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 answers reader questions prompted by his earlier article distinguishing product teams from feature and delivery teams. He clarifies that designers and engineers contribute far beyond usability and…
Cagan argues that much of the confusion about product management comes from lumping together two very different team types that both get called 'product teams.' He distinguishes delivery teams (essentially re-packaged…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers often fixate on having the 'right answer,' presenting finished backlogs and roadmaps that stakeholders then override with their own opinions. Her remedy is to show the…
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…
Lenny Rachitsky argues that performance reviews are a secret weapon of strong managers: done well, they improve performance, align expectations, and accelerate a report's career; done poorly, they drive people out. He…
Marty Cagan argues that the most important trait of a capable product manager is the ability to think, which is distinct from raw intelligence. Product management is fundamentally problem solving under many simultaneous…
Marty Cagan argues that effective product managers need about four uninterrupted hours a day for product discovery: working out valuable, usable, feasible, and viable solutions to hard problems. He observes that many…
Lenny Rachitsky distills roughly seven years of marketplace supply-growth lessons from Airbnb into a catalogue of tactics and strategies, including the value proposition, referral programs, direct sales, piggy-backing…
Marty Cagan argues that the best product managers think like owners rather than employees, taking responsibility for outcomes instead of merely completing activities. He draws on Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters to…
The author analyzed 51 Silicon Valley tech job postings, ranging from startups to large companies like Uber, Visa, and Amazon, to see what companies actually expect Product Managers to own. The findings show PMs are…
Lenny Rachitsky reflects on seven years at Airbnb, from early engineer to PM, distilling lessons on building a company. He argues that strong culture and values create competitive advantage in hiring, speed, and…
Lenny Rachitsky recounts a failed Airbnb 'social travel' launch, arguing that the core mistake was misunderstanding the real problem (travelers want high-quality non-touristy things to do, not to meet other travelers)…
Lenny Rachitsky compiles a list of fifteen practical sources for product roadmap ideas, drawn partly from community suggestions. The core argument is that strong ideas come from direct customer contact, observing…
Lenny Rachitsky, who moved from engineering into product at Airbnb, lays out how to decide whether product management suits you, which of four common entry paths to pursue, and which seven core skills to build. He…
Lenny Rachitsky argues that three core Buddhist teachings (dukkha, impermanence, and non-self) map well onto product management work. He explains that dissatisfaction is a built-in feature of human psychology, so PMs…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion share practical ways to use opportunity solution trees beyond the original tool. Hope adapts the tree with color-coding so stakeholders can quickly see which opportunities and solutions are…
Teresa Torres argues that continuous product discovery is not limited to famous consumer tech companies; any product team, including those at traditional enterprises, can practice it. She uses a case study of Farm…
Marty Cagan notices that several of the strongest product companies, including Apple, Google and Amazon, have very different cultures yet share a hidden common thread: their founders were coached by Bill Campbell, the…
Marty Cagan continues his coaching series by describing how managers can help product managers close specific skill gaps identified in an earlier assessment. He covers product knowledge (users, data, industry, business…
Hiten Shah recounts how his analytics startup KISSmetrics went from a near-breakthrough to a stalled company. After two failed products, the team did customer research and found a strong market, building features that…
Teresa Torres, a discovery coach, shares a case study of a SEEK product team that moved from ad hoc, as-needed discovery to a structured, continuous discovery practice. Before coaching, the team interviewed customers…
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…
Teresa Torres, who teaches design-based courses at Northwestern, argues that continuous discovery principles extend beyond product work to broader organizational challenges like engagement, team effectiveness, and…
Marty Cagan argues that the written narrative is his favorite coaching tool for turning product managers into exceptional ones. Unlike a spec, a narrative lays out the vision, the customer and business value, and the…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams waste effort ranking backlogs of solutions with made-up scoring formulas. Instead, teams should gather customer opportunities (needs, pain points, desires) from interview stories…
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 follows up on an earlier list of product manager problem areas with five more common pitfalls. He argues that many teams play defense, acting risk-averse and protecting ground instead of moving forward…