Lenny Rachitsky offers a three-step process for a product person to say no to a manager while keeping their trust: listen and ask questions, form an independent point of view, then respond constructively using one of…
“Product trios are cross-functional product teams who are responsible for both deciding what to build and then building it. The goal is for a product trio to represent balanced perspectives while still remaining as small as possible to facilitate and expedite collaborative decision-making. In this article, we’ll”
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…
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…
Marty Cagan argues that 'Product Ops' has become a vague label, with at least six distinct meanings in companies today, making a claim that a company 'has Product Ops' nearly meaningless. He reviews five models he finds…
Lenny Rachitsky reports results from his second annual tech worker sentiment survey, finding the workforce splitting into those amplified by AI and those destabilized by it. Burnout has risen sharply, career optimism…
Marty Cagan argues that product management is demanding and that product managers inevitably face rough days, which matter more because their teams watch how they react. He offers a set of practical habits for breaking…
Julie Zhuo's paid essay argues that an AI transformation cannot be ordered into existence from the top down. It presents a ten-step guide to leading an AI shift in a way that preserves care for people and their sense of…
Marty Cagan argues that product leaders should not be dismissed because of their youth, noting that outstanding product people exist across all ages. He points out that anyone 24 or older has grown up alongside the…
Marty Cagan responds to a critique of the Spotify model of scaled Agile by arguing that the critic overlooks Spotify's business outcomes and Fitbit's decline after adopting the process the critic favored. He contends…
The source text provided is only navigation and site chrome from the Silicon Valley Product Group articles index, with no body content from the essay titled "Experts Lead Experts." Because the actual argument cannot be…
Lenny Rachitsky follows up his tech worker sentiment survey by investigating how people who avoid or effectively manage burnout do it. Drawing on open-ended video surveys and interviews, he introduces ARMOR, a five-part…
Teresa Torres contrasts two product managers: Jim, who is absorbed in delivery tasks and makes all the team's decisions, and Sally, who has time for customer discovery because her team shares the problem-solving load…
Marty Cagan argues that real collaboration in an empowered product team is very different from how many product managers assume they work. It is not consensus, democracy, artifact-producing requirement handoffs, or…
An open, personal letter from a manager to a younger, overconfident college graduate she once worked with. The author reflects on how the young person's arrogance was hard to see past at the time, and frames the piece…
The article argues that Chief Product Officer roles have multiplied since 2020 as companies become more customer-centric, but the title is inconsistently applied and poorly defined. It distinguishes the CPO, who sets…
Marty Cagan revisits his earlier essay on the product manager role, arguing that confusion persists and that the role is more critical than ever. He contrasts three working modes: escalating everything to the CEO (a…
Shreyas Doshi argues that many ambitious mid-career people in tech feel dissatisfied not because of a single failure but because their career growth has stalled relative to their own expectations. Drawing on years of…
Marty Cagan pays tribute to Bruce Williams, a Silicon Valley marketing leader and close friend who died of pancreatic cancer in May 2016. The essay uses Williams's life to explore two topics important to product people…
Marty Cagan argues that the product management field suffers from a widespread problem: many people become product managers after only a Certified Scrum Product Owner course, which teaches delivery-process rituals…
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…
Lenny Rachitsky lays out a practical playbook for interviewing product managers: a multi-stage funnel with screens, a full-day loop, and panel debriefs. He covers which skills to test, sample questions, how to design…
Lenny answers a new PM's question about how to judge day-to-day performance by proposing three priority-ordered checks: whether the team delivers business impact, whether the individual contributes to strategy and team…
Marty Cagan argues that as companies shift from stakeholder-driven feature teams to empowered product teams, the relationship between product teams and stakeholders must change on both sides. Creating a solution…