“Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts What’s the difference between product training and product coaching—and why does it matter? In this episode, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack a topic that comes up all the time in product orgs: when do individuals and teams need structured”
Teresa Torres defends Facebook's 2014 emotional contagion study, published in PNAS, arguing that experimenting on users is standard practice for internet products and that the backlash is overblown. She contends the…
John Cutler, writing in his newsletter The Beautiful Mess, reflects on starting a new job and the intensive effort of learning how the product, workflows, history, people, and artifacts all fit together. Rather than…
Convo's product team set out to test assumptions about a feature letting Deaf users bring an interpreter into a Zoom meeting, but running those tests over Zoom introduced confusing meta-tasks and technical problems…
A glossary explaining 20+ common AI terms in simple language, from models and LLMs to transformers, training, RLHF, RAG, evals, agents, and hallucinations. It aims to help readers follow AI conversations in meetings and…
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…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams benefit from writing a short manifesto, a public declaration of core principles and beliefs that complements the product vision and strategy. He describes how a manifesto forces a…
This piece is a curated index of the author's earlier posts on breaking into product management. Its premise is that people arrive at product roles from many backgrounds, so there is no single path, and the most common…
This tribute essay by Christian Idiodi remembers Jeremiah Ivan, a former VP of Engineering he worked alongside at Merrill and Snagajob, using anecdotes to show what makes an agent of change. Ivan's unconventional…
Marty Cagan recommends Stratechery, Ben Thompson's newsletter on tech strategy, as a valuable resource for product managers and leaders. He argues that a key part of product leadership is understanding markets…
This post reports feedback from the first cohort of Teresa Torres's Continuous Interviewing course, which ran for 50 product managers, designers, and UX researchers. It recaps the course's rationale, drawing on…
Lenny Rachitsky argues that most job postings are dull and that a standout posting is a high-return investment for attracting applicants and strengthening brand. He shares several examples from companies like…
This essay describes how Ramsey Solutions, a financial education company, approached its digital transformation by first examining its own identity and capabilities rather than only envisioning its future. Its CEO's…
Hiten Shah revisits his 2015 observation of "infectious enthusiasm" in founders and argues its source is not charisma but a prior, settled decision to pursue the work regardless of outcome. He contends that investors…
Teresa Torres profiles how Edwin Yuen, a product designer at The Times London, uses Vistaly to build opportunity solution trees for his puzzle-focused squad. The piece presents a practical, tool-specific walkthrough of…
This reading guide kicks off the Continuous Discovery Habits five-year anniversary book club, focusing on Chapter 8, 'Supercharged Ideation.' It argues that generating many ideas, rather than settling on the first one…
Teresa Torres argues that customer interviews often fail because people describe their ideal behavior rather than what they actually do, and their brains readily invent coherent but false explanations. She draws on…
John Cutler argues that visual maps of product work, such as value streams, dependency diagrams, or process flows, can create a false sense of clarity and hide real problems. When the underlying system is incoherent, a…
Teresa Torres argues that empathy, the ability to feel what another person feels rather than merely sympathize, is essential for building products that solve real problems or create delight. Sympathy tends to make us…
Cagan argues that the product design field should expand its focus well beyond usability. Usability still matters and can differentiate products, especially in enterprise software, but the harder question is whether…
Marty Cagan argues that great brands come from great products rather than from marketing alone, and that Silicon Valley companies often err by fixating on technology. He notes HP's brand was stronger when built on…
Teresa Torres argues that user-story backlogs tend to grow into disorganized collections that lose connection to the product's purpose. Her remedy is to define a small set of strategic goals as themes before writing…
Marty Cagan argues that company culture, defined by how a company treats its employees, customers, and partners, directly shapes how product teams work and what they build. He suggests a company's treatment of employees…