“Many teams, like sales and marketing, have time-bound goals, like reaching $X in bookings or generating Y leads by a specific date. Product teams are also held to time-bound goals. Empowered product teams, for example, are asked to deliver outcomes each quarter. But sometimes companies take this too”
This podcast episode argues that organizational change is exhausting and that individuals usually waste energy trying to fix their companies' people and processes. Teresa Torres and Petra Wille describe a three-part…
This opening post in a planned series argues that a company can only launch a successful product if it builds something customers actually want, which requires deep knowledge of the customer's need, context, and…
Carole Robin, co-creator of Stanford's 'Touchy Feely' course, answers a reader whose co-founder relationship is deteriorating while the business still needs it to work. She argues that co-founder friction, like marriage…
Teresa Torres reflects on a live podcast discussion about writing user stories, where co-host Roger Cauvin argued that stories lacking the who and why leave engineers doing only the bare minimum. Torres clarifies that…
Product Talk's community manager, Welena Villasoto, shows how a non-PM can run a weekly continuous interviewing practice. She practiced story-based interviewing with Teresa Torres first, moving from talking too much to…
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…
Product managers constantly receive requests from sales, executives, support, engineers, and customers, and trying to satisfy all of them can derail a well-defined product. The author argues that you can rarely both…
Teresa Torres argues that product requirements should describe the user opportunity rather than prescribe a solution, since detailed upfront solution specs lead teams to overcommit before validating what works. She…
This Product in Practice story describes how Ellen Juhlin, a senior product director at Orion Labs, brought engineers into continuous discovery. Engineers often see product work as order-taking, but their technical…
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…
Cagan argues that product decisions often stall because teams debate options without agreeing on the underlying problem, target user, goals, and priorities. Product decisions are especially contentious since everyone…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion argue that a champion such as a CEO can start a product operating model shift, but it stalls without support from leaders and stakeholders across the company. Pilot teams need managers and…
Teresa Torres argues that engineers should be active participants in product discovery rather than only writing code, since they contribute distinct knowledge and skills. She explains that different team members…
Teresa Torres reviews Richard Feynman's memoir-style essays and draws lessons for product work. She argues that confidence in discussing ideas, rather than deferring to status, helps product managers defend their…
This book club post kicks off a monthly reading guide for Teresa Torres's Continuous Discovery Habits on its fifth anniversary. It focuses on Chapter 4, which argues that individuals should draw their own experience…
Jason Fried defends the continued use of cover letters in hiring, responding to people who think they no longer matter. He argues that a cover letter is the first and most revealing signal of an applicant's effort…
Lenny Rachitsky lists five habits that make product managers annoying to their teams and suggests how to avoid them. The core argument is that great PMs add much value, but rigid process worship, impulsive…
Coach Natalie Rothfels argues that stuck, overwhelmed product leaders are usually facing inner conflict between competing 'parts' of themselves, which external productivity tactics can't fix. She walks through the…
Lenny Rachitsky shares tactics from angel investor and founder Sam Corcos on getting real value from investors. The post argues founders often fail to activate their networks because they don't ask well, and covers…
Melissa Perri argues that a new Chief Product Officer must shift from viewing executives as obstacles to seeing them as teammates with their own goals and constraints. The essay stresses that the CEO relationship is the…
Product teams are often flooded with ideas from customers, stakeholders, and their own discovery work, and need a way to capture them without derailing their workflow. In this Tools of the Trade interview, Teresa Torres…
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…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille rant about how absurd corporate procurement has become for outside experts like speakers and consultants. Torres describes contracts with 80-page ethics policies, 800-question security…