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…
“Product teams need to understand how the work they are doing impacts the business. It's up to product leaders to share this strategic context with their teams. Our 2022 CDH Benchmark Survey exposed some gaps in this area. We asked teams: “Is your product intended to grow revenue, reduce”
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…
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 interviews Laura Klein, who moved from interaction design and user research into a product role at a small company. Laura argues the transition felt natural because good designers and researchers already…
Teresa Torres ran the inaugural CDH Benchmark survey, collecting responses from 1,999 product people across 78 countries to measure how many teams have adopted continuous discovery habits and whether those habits…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion walk through the seven most common reasons product teams say they have no time for discovery, and offer practical fixes for each. The core argument is that discovery should run in tandem…
Teresa Torres argues that teams should adopt continuous discovery through small, sustainable habits rather than attempting a full transformation at once, which often leads to frustration. She adapts Nisha Vora's SPICEY…
Teresa Torres describes how she rolled out the idea management tool Kindling at AfterCollege so that everyone in the company could contribute to idea generation and evaluation. The approach worked because it had clear…
Your story is the operating system for your company. Everything runs on top of it. When the operating system is buggy, everything else slows down.
This podcast episode examines how capacity planning, a common quarterly ritual of allocating team time to fixed deliverables, fits within outcome-driven and discovery-first product organizations. The hosts argue that…
Teresa Torres describes rolling out Kindling, a simple idea management app, across her company to make product input more transparent and data-driven. She wanted an easy tool that everyone would use to share and vote on…
Jason Fried defends the continued use of cover letters in hiring, responding to people who think they no longer matter. He argues that a cover letter is the first and most revealing signal of an applicant's effort…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about team speed by compiling a list of roughly fifteen tactics drawn from founders, his own experience, and community input. The core argument is that velocity matters…
Hila Qu, a growth advisor and former GitLab and Acorns growth leader, walks through how B2B companies can add a product-led growth (PLG) motion alongside sales. Her core argument is that PLG and sales are complementary…
Jason Fried argues that the common hiring requirement of 'years of experience' is a weak signal, since time spent doing something doesn't guarantee anything was actually produced or learned. He proposes evaluating…
Cagan argues that many companies confuse a product vision with a mission statement, a slogan of purpose that does not do the work a product vision must do. He also criticizes the practice of each product team inventing…
Two former Reddit leaders outline a four-step framework for building products with a vocal, opinionated user base: measuring trust, listening to representative voices, moving debate into private advisory councils, and…
Marty Cagan argues that Agile methods, such as Scrum and XP, change but do not eliminate the product manager's job, and he offers guidance specific to product software rather than custom or IT projects. The product…