“What's the difference between OKRs and outcomes? This is by far one of the most common questions I get and there are lots of ways to answer it. Defining the Terms: OKRs vs. Outcomes Here's my response: First, an OKR is comprised of an objective and key results.”
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…
This Product in Practice piece follows the Simply Business product team as they adopted continuous discovery with coaching from Teresa Torres. Their first chosen opportunity, late customer payments, was a real pain…
Marty Cagan argues that empowered product teams need hard problems to solve, and product strategy is the discipline of deciding which problems matter. He observes that many companies have plenty of features and projects…
Marty Cagan argues that as companies shift from sales-driven feature teams to empowered product teams, the way product teams engage customers changes, and customers need to understand why. He frames a set of pledges…
Aman Khan argues that writing evaluations is becoming a defining skill for AI product managers, since evals measure how each part of a system affects quality. The post explains what evals are, compares human, code-based…
Teresa Torres explains how she decides what to accept and decline as a product coach, teacher, writer and speaker, starting from a clear set of personal priorities: teaching, curriculum design, reading, writing and…
Teresa Torres shares the personal productivity, reading, product-building, and collaboration tools she relies on as a product manager, startup builder, and graduate student. She opens with a caveat that she once…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams learn most when they put early, rough ideas in front of real users, and that they should do so faster than feels comfortable. He notes that polishing ideas in private mostly deepens…
This third installment of a marketplace growth series examines how leading marketplaces bootstrapped their initial supply, which is the side that most marketplaces remain constrained on. Drawing on interviews with…
Cagan argues that team autonomy and leadership control are reconciled when leaders supply two inputs: a clear product vision and specific, prioritized business objectives for each team. Teams should then have freedom…
Teresa Torres argues that discovery teams should be judged by whether their discovery work actually moves a desired product outcome, tracked as absolute progress quarter over quarter rather than percent of a goal. Since…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion continue their series arguing there is no single right way to run product discovery, while holding teams to shared principles. This session covers two principles of continuous discovery…
Marty Cagan argues that product discovery depends heavily on judgement, which many product people try to replace with frameworks and templates. He identifies four areas where judgement is required: assessing risk…
Teresa Torres interviews Ellen Juhlin, a product leader at Orion Labs, about how she introduced continuous discovery habits to a team that had been driven by founder-led outputs, sales-driven feature requests, and…
Teresa Torres argues that product discovery, the work of deciding what to build, should be a continuous activity rather than a project-based phase at the start of a initiative. She contrasts it with delivery, the work…
Marty Cagan and Felipe Castro argue that moving from outputs (what we build) to outcomes (the difference we make) is conceptually simple but practically very hard. They contend that most failed attempts stem from trying…
Marty Cagan responds to a debate sparked by Don Norman's essay arguing that big societal innovations are driven by technology first and needs later, which Norman frames against heavy upfront user research. Cagan says…
Teresa Torres argues that a clear desired outcome sets the scope, latitude, and success measure for product discovery, yet many teams struggle to define one. She distinguishes outcomes (the impact of work on customers…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion, both discovery coaches, argue that there is no single correct way to do product discovery, because every company, team, and customer base differs. Instead of prescribing one method, they…
Torres argues that thinking of a product as a collection of features is a trap that quietly undermines product quality. A feature-first mindset pulls teams into competitor-chasing, produces me-too offerings, and invites…
This Product in Practice piece profiles how Hemnet, Sweden's largest property portal, adopted continuous discovery through a grassroots start. A User Research Director and a Chief Product Officer describe how one…
Marty Cagan revisits his earlier framing of product success as valuable, usable, and feasible, arguing that the single word 'valuable' hid serious business risk and let product managers overweight customer value. He…
Teresa Torres recaps her talk and fireside chat at Y Oslo 2024 on continuous discovery. She argues discovery is a team activity involving engineers, designers and PMs, that teams should start with the smallest possible…