Communication & influence

Leading with empathy

Generating buzz

Lenny Rachitsky argues that launches only get attention when they are genuinely remarkable, something worth talking about. He organizes ten recurring buzz-generating strategies, such as remarkable videos, value…

The Power of Visiontypes

Marty Cagan uses an anecdote about Apple, Xerox PARC, and the graphical desktop computer to explain what a product vision and a 'visiontype' (a vision prototype) are for. He argues that a compelling visiontype helps…

4 Powerful Ways to Use Rapid Prototyping to Drive Product Success

Teresa Torres argues that rapid prototyping is far broader than wireframes and usability testing. She offers a working definition of a prototype as something that simulates an experience, is built to answer a specific…

How to Write Product Requirements Iteratively

Teresa Torres argues that most product requirements are poor because teams finish writing them too early and start building before the solution has been iterated on. She recommends treating requirements like writing…

Discovery – Feedback

Marty Cagan argues that product teams should actively seek out critical, negative feedback, since qualitative insight about why users don't adopt, buy, or stay is more valuable than most quantitative data. He observes…

Coaching Tools – The One on One

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…

Customer Interviews: How to Recruit, What to Ask, and How to Synthesize What You Learn

Teresa Torres argues that customer interviews are among the most valuable and sustainable ways for product teams to learn about customers, creating a compounding competitive advantage. She separates true customer…

This Question Will Let You Own Your Roadmap Again

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…

Preparing for a PM interview

Lenny Rachitsky lays out a three-part approach to preparing for product manager interviews: research the product, company and interview process; practice with real people through mock interviews and coaching; and study…

Why Product Trios Should Interview Customers Together

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…

Professional Development During the Pandemic: Fact or Fiction?

The article argues that remote work during the pandemic has, paradoxically, created room for product managers and leaders to invest in professional development. Without commutes and in-person meetings eating their days…

Learning Fast vs. Failing Fast

Chris Jones argues that the popular slogans "fail fast" and "embrace failure" have outlived their usefulness because they blur risky experimentation with genuinely preventable mistakes. He proposes reserving the word…

Assessing Customer Impact

Marty Cagan argues that as teams move to frequent or continuous delivery, releases can surprise customers and internal stakeholders such as sales, service, and product marketing. Most incremental releases are invisible…

The Product Model in Outsourcing

Marty Cagan and Josh Kerievsky argue that outsourcing agencies can apply the product model to custom solution work, even though clients often arrive with a fixed solution in mind and fixed-price contracts. The core…

Introducing LOVED

Marty Cagan introduces Martina Lauchengco's book LOVED, which argues that product/market fit has two halves: a strong product and a strong market approach. Building on his earlier work on product discovery, he contends…

Stop Brainstorming and Generate Better Ideas

Teresa Torres argues that product leaders should not be the sole decision-makers on what to build, and that a company should instead empower its whole team to generate and evaluate ideas. She contends that…

Make a Friend in Finance

Cagan argues that many product managers, especially those coming from engineering, have only a shallow grasp of how their product and company make money. He recommends cultivating a relationship with someone in the…

Dear Product Manager, Nobody Is Looking At Your Resume

Torres argues that cold-applying for product roles rarely works, because large companies filter resumes by keyword and smaller ones have busy reviewers who skim them in seconds. Her remedy is an inside referral, ideally…

How To Talk To Your Customers (Despite Henry Ford and Steve Jobs)

Teresa Torres argues that product teams should talk to customers every day, even though famous quotes from Henry Ford and Steve Jobs seem to dismiss customer research. The key distinction is that customers can't…

Watch Cable TV and Read People Magazine

The author, watching TV ads on a DVR, found that a Palm Pre commercial failed to convey what the phone actually did, while an iPhone ad made the product immediately clear and compelling. She argues that products only…

7 Standout Moments From Mind the Product SF 2017

Teresa Torres recaps her favorite moments from the Mind the Product SF 2017 conference, which she considers the best product event she attends. She highlights her own workshop on continuous product discovery habits…

Advocating For Racial Equity

Christian Idiodi, an SVPG partner and Black leader in tech, writes about the personal weight of racial injustice in America and asks why tech companies, which tackle enormous problems like aging and space colonization…