Marty Cagan argues that managers of product managers must actively develop their people, since talented PMs will leave for other companies if they lack growth. He presents a gap-analysis skills assessment as the…
John Cutler argues that AI tools can reduce the cost of gathering and reusing context, which he calls a 'recontextualization tax' that teams pay whenever knowledge has to be re-explained across people, documents, and…
Marty Cagan, after noticing that more than half of the 'rock star' product managers he knows are women despite women being a small share of the field, offers personal, non-statistical theories about why. He argues that…
This page is a curated index from SVPG, Marty Cagan's product consultancy, collecting its writing and videos on how generative AI affects product teams. Rather than a single argument, it groups prior pieces by theme…
Marty Cagan argues that a common and avoidable form of waste in product teams is when one member, often a user researcher, learns something important about customers but the rest of the team doesn't absorb it. Findings…
“This is the second post in a four part series on Sharing Knowledge in Product Management. The first part looked at sharing knowledge from customers to product manager. This part examines from product Mangers to engineers. Part three will examine from engineers back to product managers. Finally, part four will”
Marty Cagan argues against a common fallacy in the tech industry: that developers only care about building tools for other developers. He contends that most engineers are passionate about solving real problems for real…
Marty Cagan and Stacey Langer argue that the product model, though born in commercial product companies, fits government technology work because government also aims to create value and achieve outcomes, just measured…
Marty Cagan argues that when engineering demands a halt to features for a full rewrite, the root cause is usually product management, which has pushed teams to ship features while neglecting infrastructure until the…
Lenny Rachitsky introduces Core 4, a unified developer productivity framework built with DX and the authors of DORA, SPACE, and DevEx. The post explains how to baseline team velocity with an anonymous survey, calculate…
Marty Cagan argues that organizations believe they are good at focus but usually chase 20-30 'critical' initiatives when only two or three truly matter. He contrasts this with Pandora's stakeholder-driven prioritization…
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…
Marty Cagan clarifies a terminology problem in the product community: many people use "product leader" interchangeably with "product manager" or "product owner," which causes unnecessary confusion. He argues the two…
Marty Cagan argues that empowerment in product teams must be paired with accountability, and that how accountability applies depends on the ambition of the objective. A team that misses a bold "Moon Shot" goal is…
Marty Cagan argues that during and after the pandemic, teams are sliding back into heavy requirements documents (PRDs) because remote collaboration is tiring. He reframes the core of strong product work as three things…
Chris Jones, an SVPG partner, describes the hard transition from being a strong individual-contributor product manager to managing other PMs. He recounts advice from his own manager, Steve Roop, that a new hire should…
Marty Cagan argues that generative AI will reshape how product teams are built and how they work, drawing on his decades of experience through successive tech disruptions like the PC, the internet, and mobile. He is…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion analyze free-text answers from a 2022 benchmark survey where many product teams answered 'other' when asked whether their product aims to grow revenue or reduce costs. Using real examples…
Marty Cagan argues that a manager has a large effect on whether a product manager is happy, and that good managers should check in weekly on whether the PM finds her work meaningful, is growing in her career, and has…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that the best way to develop a team's skills is often a small, intentional learning group rather than either training everyone at once or leaving people to self-direct. They contrast…
Jason Fried argues that hiring, especially for executive roles, is ultimately a gut decision driven by judgment. Although hiring processes try to add scientific rigor, the essential qualities being evaluated, experience…
This issue of Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter covers three reader questions. The first asks how a bootstrapped founder should offer a late-joining CTO equity without deterring investors; guest Hunter Walk advises common…
Marty Cagan argues that Agile methods such as Scrum originated in the custom software world, where software is built for a specific customer under contract, rather than in product software companies. That origin…
Cagan introduces the idea of a 'line' that separates the two fundamental activities of building software products: deciding what to build (left of the line) and building it (right of the line). Left of the line covers…