Marty Cagan argues that product teams should stop framing their work as gathering and documenting requirements, since most so-called requirements are really constraints. He proposes defining products along two…
Teresa Torres wraps a 3-month blog series inspired by Chip and Dan Heath's book Decisive, connecting its decision-making research to product work. Her posts argue that product teams should be prepared to be wrong, ask…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers often make quick, gut-based calls when colleagues ask for features or details, and that the way decisions are made matters as much as the decisions themselves. Drawing on…
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…
Teresa Torres uses Jia Jiang's story of pursuing a startup dream under a six-month deadline to introduce the idea of tripwires: predefined points where a decision gets reconsidered. She argues that as people invest…
Teresa Torres argues that product people routinely make poor estimates because they produce single-point predictions for uncertain outcomes like build time or conversion rates. Drawing on research summarized in the…
Teresa Torres argues that as a product grows and the leader can no longer be everywhere, the vision must be turned into guardrails that let others decide autonomously yet consistently. Drawing on the Heath brothers'…
Teresa Torres argues that resistance to product changes often has little to do with whether the new design solves a real need. Instead, people push back because they have grown familiar with the status quo and because…
Teresa Torres describes a common product dilemma: a few at-risk customers request a feature that doesn't fit the product's strategy and may have more perceived than actual value. She argues that the hardest part is not…
Cagan argues that strong products are the foundation of a healthy business: weak products inflate acquisition costs, lengthen sales cycles, pressure prices and burden customer service. The most powerful antidote is a…
Teresa Torres argues that most product ideas are born from fleeting thoughts, but only some should become businesses. She offers a set of questions to test an idea's viability before investing heavily. Her approach…
Teresa Torres examines the common push to build a mobile app and tests the assumption that it will drive growth. Stakeholders often justify the idea with broad beliefs about mobile usage, yet the data on typical app…
Marty Cagan argues that many Agile trainers and coaches who work with software teams lack the experience needed for commercial product companies, and that the poor work he has repeatedly cleaned up after is a persistent…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams often fall for confirmation bias: people notice evidence that supports their ideas and overlook disconfirming signals, even when given the same data. Her example shows how…
Teresa Torres describes a design problem with a job posting form's location options, where combining multiple location types and telecommute rules created excessive complexity. Instead of designing from scratch, her…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers make dozens of decisions daily and tend to feel confident about them, yet decision research shows people often make poor choices while believing they are sound. Our minds are…
Teresa Torres uses the story of a skier who tried to build a snowboard that worked like skis, despite lukewarm feedback, to show how product teams fall into one-idea-at-a-time thinking. Drawing on the Heath brothers'…
Marty Cagan, author of product management writing, sets out the personal beliefs that underpin his work and teaching: faith in technology, leadership, honesty, people, giving back, and continuous improvement. He argues…
The author describes a lunchtime request from a sales director to build a feature that could keep a few at-risk customers, and argues that the framing of 'should we build it or not' is too narrow. Drawing on Chip and…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams need to move fast, and that many teams still hold a Waterfall-era belief that speed trades off against quality and innovation. He contends that speed is valuable for reasons beyond…
Teresa Torres argues that product builders consistently overestimate how right they are, drawing on behavioral research and the Heath brothers' book Decisive, which describes four decision-making traps: narrow framing…
Teresa Torres walks through how she sets quarterly product goals for her team, focusing on the most valuable thing the business needs next. She shows three quarters of goals that changed as her understanding grew: first…
Marty Cagan and Jeff Patton argue that product teams should be judged by the outcomes they generate rather than the output they ship. The article offers a practical checklist of questions to diagnose how strong a…
Teresa Torres argues that good design comes from deliberately generating many ideas rather than waiting for a single flash of insight. She notes that the effortless-seeming "a-ha" moment rests on a lot of prior work…
Cagan distinguishes two lightweight planning tools that are often confused: the Business Model or Lean Canvas and the Opportunity Assessment. The Canvas suits new businesses or entirely new product lines, where many…
Teresa Torres describes mentoring a design intern with no prior design background, who is learning interaction design over a summer. Her approach blends reading (Don Norman's and Alan Cooper's books), iterative…
Teresa Torres reviews Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz and argues it is an essential, accessible guide to product and startup analytics. She notes it covers the basics of good metrics and segments…
Marty Cagan argues that product managers face a constant flood of requests from well-meaning colleagues, and that a product manager who simply funnels all of them into the roadmap will slowly kill the product. He…
Torres argues that all-time totals, like lifetime registered users, are rarely useful because they only go up and hide whether a product is improving or declining. The right measure depends on choosing a time increment…
Torres argues that before choosing metrics, teams must define what success looks like for their specific product, because it differs widely across businesses. She illustrates this with three examples: a price comparison…