Marty Cagan follows up on his earlier critique of 'process people' hijacking product ops. He notes that 'product ops' has no settled definition, and he has identified at least six different versions in his work with…
“I had a friend reach out recently for advice. He said something funny/telling. “Half the time I don’t know what you really think. I have to figure out how my team works. What is your actual, opinionated advice?” So here it is: advice for a friend on how to operate. Raw. Not “polished John”.”
Teresa Torres describes how she dedicates much of December to reflecting on the past year and planning the next. She runs an annual retrospective asking what went well and what did not, and keeps both lists in view to…
This weekly roundup by Teresa Torres curates readings on building better products, grouped around experimentation, skill development, and influence. Her central point is that experiments only produce value when they are…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion continue their series on adopting the product operating model, focusing on resistance from leaders and stakeholders rather than pilot teams. They argue that transformation is…
Marty Cagan argues that the root cause of many large companies losing their product innovation is an over-reliance on process over people. He builds on his earlier overview of Product Ops models by focusing on why…
Martina Lauchengco, a long-time SVPG partner, shares her origin story: an instinct for finding better ways that grew from a childhood shaped by her father's habit of challenging the status quo. She recounts early…
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…
This Product in Practice piece profiles Chris Hockley, a lean agile coach at SuperAwesome, who introduced the opportunity solution tree to several product teams through a staggered rollout. He found that teams grasped…
This Product in Practice profile follows Eva Spexard, Head of Operations and People at Passion.io, who applies continuous discovery habits to the employee experience rather than to a product. She treats employees as…
Olga Berezovsky, guest-writing for Lenny Rachitsky, argues that cohort retention is widely misunderstood and costly to get wrong, and offers a practical guide to measuring it. She recommends defining "active" by the…
Marty Cagan argues that a product manager's core job is discovering products that are valuable, usable and feasible, and that engineering must be involved early to achieve feasibility. Waiting until engineering sees a…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams must map the opportunity space before solving problems, because customer interviews surface far more needs, pain points, and desires than any team can address. Treating…
Marty Cagan argues that product organizations contain three kinds of contributors rather than two: makers (designers, engineers, researchers), managers, and a growing group he calls process people. Process roles like…
Claire Vo presents a step-by-step guide to installing, configuring, and using OpenClaw, an open-source personal AI agent that runs locally and takes instructions through everyday chat apps. The post covers hardware and…
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…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion, both coaches, examine how resistance surfaces on pilot teams during a product operating model rollout, even among volunteers. They identify three common objections: "we don't have time,"…
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…
Teresa Torres profiles Tali Melchior, Director of Product Management at Texthelp, who introduced opportunity solution trees (OSTs) first at a previous company after a book club, then at Texthelp, and later through…
Designer Ben Shih describes building LennyRPG, a Pokémon-style pixel game where players meet and quiz Lenny's Podcast guests using transcripts from 300+ episodes. The post walks through his AI-assisted workflow…
Cagan argues that many product teams neglect design, leaving products with weak user experiences because the design roles that shape usability and emotional appeal are missing. He lays out four design roles that work…
Teresa Torres uses a playful Halloween scenario, planning hot apple cider for neighbors, to illustrate the four levels of product analysis: design, feasibility, feature, and value. Each roadblock the cider plan hits…
Marty Cagan argues that UX designers often work in isolation, going off for days or weeks to produce a polished 'grand reveal,' a pattern he calls the 'internal agency model.' This breaks down because requirements and…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams building enterprise software can and should experiment, even though A/B testing is often impractical for them. She points out that experiments are simply procedures for testing a…