Cagan argues that product decisions in most companies stall because the right people are never in the same room, and proposes a Product Council: a small cross-functional group of senior managers whose sole job is to…
Cagan argues that legacy companies in retail, airlines, and financial services must shift from using technology internally to delivering technology directly to customers. Customer-facing technology faces a far higher…
Marty Cagan revisits the Silicon Valley slogan "we eat our own dog food," which he once repeated at Netscape, and now calls it meaningless. Using your own product is just another form of QA, not something to brag about…
“Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts Drowning in Jira tickets? Wondering how to prioritize when every stakeholder has a “brilliant” idea and your roadmap is already bursting at the seams? In this episode of All Things Product, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille tackle one of the most common”
Marty Cagan writes a tribute to Mike Homer, a Silicon Valley pioneer and mentor who died of CJD, using his memorial service to reflect on what makes great product leaders. Cagan argues that the best leaders are deeply…
Lenny Rachitsky distills roughly seven years of marketplace supply-growth lessons from Airbnb into a catalogue of tactics and strategies, including the value proposition, referral programs, direct sales, piggy-backing…
As a product grows from one team to many, keeping a holistic view of how the whole product fits together becomes very hard. Cagan argues that three senior roles are needed to hold that view: a principal designer for…
Marty Cagan argues that product creation is a blend of art and science, though he has long leaned toward the scientific side because of his training. Reading Rick Rubin's book The Creative Act reshaped his view…
Marty Cagan argues that the Agile movement had two parts: frequent small releases, and empowering teams to solve problems rather than execute roadmaps. The first change spread easily, but the second threatened…
Torres argues that good product goals start from the user's success rather than vanity product metrics like page views or time on site. She recommends defining a success funnel by comparing successful users with…
Lenny explains what investors mean by a "venture-scale" startup: a credible path to roughly $100M in annual revenue and a $1B+ valuation within about a decade. He argues most ideas, including many successful products…
This podcast episode, hosted by Teresa Torres with guest Petra Wille, argues that saying no is a core product management skill rather than an optional extra. The conversation accepts that there is always more work than…
Marty Cagan argues that product people, despite often coming from analytical backgrounds, work fundamentally in the realm of emotion and psychology. He observes that people buy and use products mainly for emotional…
Lenny Rachitsky argues that AI will hit the high-level strategic parts of product management, such as strategy, vision, and goal-setting, harder than the people-centric work. He contends that soft skills like…
Marty Cagan argues that a product must actually work, not just be the right product, and that software quality remains poor across much of the industry. He notes that manual, under-resourced QA is a common failure, even…
Marty Cagan describes a discovery framing technique for larger product efforts, such as redesigns, where a simple opportunity assessment may not convey enough value. He builds on Amazon's 'working backwards' practice of…
Cagan describes a role that appears in large matrixed companies: the business owner, who represents a business unit (by geography, device, or function) that a central product organization serves. He argues this role can…
Marty Cagan argues that market research tools such as surveys, analytics, focus groups, site visits and usability testing are valuable but have clear limits in product work. Tensions between marketing and product teams…
Jason Fried argues that how fast a product is built, how many commits or people went into it, and how many hours were spent are all development metrics about the work, not the product. These measures say nothing about…
Teresa Torres describes a period of struggle as a startup CEO, realizing that her work was interesting to her but not meaningful. Interest fades when products get hard or go wrong, while meaning sustains effort. She…
Cagan argues that many companies remain stuck in failed models of product management because they misdefine the role. Rather than restating what the job is, he lists common misconceptions and explains why each one…
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…
Cagan argues that the build-versus-buy question, long familiar in IT and product teams, is being reshaped by generative AI and user-programming tools like Lovable and Bolt. Despite hype that everyone will build and SaaS…
Jason Fried argues that teams don't need a prioritized backlog to know what to work on next. Choosing the next task is just a series of yes/no decisions, and those can be made as you go, using what you currently know…