by Marty Cagan | Jul 25, 2018
In my last article, Revenge of the PMO, I shared my views on the product development process called SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). It was a bit of a departure from my normal areas of focus, and the article caused a considerable stir, with more than an order of...
by Marty Cagan | Jul 1, 2018
Recently I published an article Revenge of the PMO that argues against a particular framework for agile at scale known as SAFe. This was a bit unusual for me in that I normally don’t like to write much about process because the topic is so religious to so many...
by Marty Cagan | Jun 29, 2018
UPDATE 2: Another name for this article could be “Product Teams vs Delivery Teams”. That’s because since this article was published, I wrote articles describing the difference between product teams vs feature teams, and product teams vs project...
by Marty Cagan | May 31, 2018
Nearly a year ago, one of my all-time favorite Agile coaches, Henrik Kniberg, published an article that I believe does an excellent job at explaining how engineering teams can leverage the concept of an MVP and ensure they are getting the core value out of Agile...
by Marty Cagan | Mar 31, 2018
The concept of the product manager as CEO of the Product has been one of the more controversial and polarizing topics in product, and most people are either strongly against this metaphor or strongly for it. In truth, I’ve been conflicted. I was first exposed to the...
by Marty Cagan | Feb 18, 2018
It’s hard to find anyone that actually defends a Waterfall process anymore. Agile methods might have their flaws, but at least they are usually much lesser flaws than Waterfall. Yet I actually meet many teams that claim to be practitioners of Agile and Lean, yet when...
by Marty Cagan | Dec 27, 2017
If you’ve had a chance to read the new edition of INSPIRED, you hopefully noticed that in this version I decided to focus quite heavily on the principles underlying modern tech product management: I want to be clear as to why you’ll see so many principles called out...
by Marty Cagan | Dec 4, 2017
In the first edition of my book, INSPIRED, I discussed how successful products are valuable, usable and feasible, where I defined “feasible” as both technically feasible and business feasible. While it’s easy to remember these three attributes, over...
by Marty Cagan | Oct 28, 2017
I’m happy to announce the results of my big project over the past year, which was to produce and release the second edition of INSPIRED: How To Create Tech Products Customers Love. The book could just as easily been characterized as “Volume 2” because it is not so...
by Marty Cagan | Sep 25, 2017
One of the most enduring myths in the product world is that great products result from listening to your customers (or prospective customers). But just as Jeff Bezos said in his latest Shareholder Letter, “No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime...
by Marty Cagan | Aug 7, 2017
There’s an old saying which comes from the world of statistics: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” This has always resonated with me. While conceptual models are never perfect, I find them to be an especially powerful tool for explaining important...
by Marty Cagan | Jul 14, 2017
One of the key responsibilities of a strong product manager or product leader is to understand your market and industry; which trends are relevant, what the competitive landscape looks like, how business models are evolving, and the broader industry dynamics. There...
by Marty Cagan | Jul 2, 2017
Sharing what we learn in a startup typically happens naturally because the product team and the company are pretty much the same thing. However, as companies scale, this becomes substantially more difficult, yet it also becomes increasingly important to do. A...
by Marty Cagan | Jun 23, 2017
In this article I’d like to discuss another discovery framing technique. For smaller and more typical size product discovery efforts, the opportunity assessment is usually sufficient. But when embarking on a somewhat larger effort, there may in fact be multiple...
by Marty Cagan | May 22, 2017
I’ve been working with several companies that are experiencing rapid growth, and there’s a role in these growth-stage product organizations that I find especially effective. The role is titled “Group Product Manager,” usually referred to as “GPM.” The role has been...
by Marty Cagan | Mar 21, 2017
I’m going to share here one of my favorite interview questions, even though that means I won’t really be able to use it anymore. But I’ve got lots of others, and I think this is valuable for all product managers to consider where they stand on this, and why. One of...
by Marty Cagan | Feb 25, 2017
I have a little heuristic which I find useful. If I see a particular issue going on in at least three companies at the same time, I figure it’s a common and serious enough issue that it’s worth writing about. In truth, I’ve already written about...
by Marty Cagan | Jan 29, 2017
I have been working exclusively with technology product teams now for a full 35 years, and I’ve seen countless processes, methodologies and techniques come and go. In large part that’s the nature of the beast. People are always searching for a silver bullet, and...
by Marty Cagan | Dec 13, 2016
Five years ago I wrote an article arguing that it is essential that the product manager is also the product owner. My motivation, which I made no secret of, was that I was worried about this point because more than a few companies were using the relatively new role...
by Marty Cagan | Nov 28, 2016
Much of product discovery work doesn’t actually require a lot of planning. We need to come up with a solution to a particular problem, and often this is straight forward, and we can proceed quickly to delivery work. But for certain efforts, this is decidedly...
