by Marty Cagan | Feb 8, 2016
NOTE: I was invited to write the foreword for Christina Wodke’s new book on OKR’s, Radical Focus, and I am sharing the foreword here. I was extremely fortunate to have started my career at Hewlett-Packard as an engineer during their heyday, when they were known as the...
by Marty Cagan | Jan 11, 2016
Lots of people have written about the challenges of managing growth. Especially about the importance of working hard to maintain staff quality as you scale the organization. There is little question that most organizations become worse in their ability to rapidly...
by Marty Cagan | Dec 29, 2015
NOTE: This article is from the foreword to the new 2nd Edition of The Art of Scalability by Marty Abbott and Michael Fisher. I’m reprinting it here because quite a few people have written me asking how to get their old-style company to start behaving more like a...
by Marty Cagan | Nov 24, 2015
One of my all-time favorite quotes in our industry comes by way of the legendary VC, John Doerr, where he argues that “we need teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries.” This point captures so much, and gets right to the heart of the most important trait...
by Marty Cagan | Nov 10, 2015
In my last article I discussed how we need to simultaneously learn fast in product discovery, yet still release with confidence in product delivery. I got a very good response from this article, as well as many questions as to how teams can get better at one or both....
by Marty Cagan | Oct 22, 2015
Most of us are working on solving some pretty hard problems, and it usually ends up taking some fairly complex systems in order to power these solutions. As such, for most teams there are two very significant challenges to tackle: First, discovering, in detail, what...
by Marty Cagan | Sep 21, 2015
In my prior article I discussed my favorite alternative to conventional product roadmaps. That article seemed to strike a chord in people, and I received quite a bit of very positive feedback. However, I also received more than a few questions. This didn’t really...
by Marty Cagan | Sep 7, 2015
I have always loved the General George Patton quote: “Don’t tell people what to do; tell them what you need accomplished, and you’ll be amazed at the results.” Unfortunately, typical roadmaps do just what the General warned against – they tell the team what to do....
by Marty Cagan | Aug 3, 2015
It pains me to write this article. I have been an unapologetic Apple fanboy for as long as I’ve been in this industry, and published articles at the debut of the iPhone, and the debut of the iPad, congratulating Apple on what I believed would go on to become extremely...
by Marty Cagan | Jun 27, 2015
I would argue that two of the most importance competencies in building great product organizations, indeed nearly any significant organizational undertaking, are leadership and management. Yet so few people actually consider what each of these really means. Many...
by Marty Cagan | Jun 5, 2015
NOTE: This article is a narrative version of a talk I’ve given for developers at the Craft Conference and for product managers and designers at Mind The Product. In this article I’d like to discuss the root causes of so many product failures. I see the same basic way...
by Marty Cagan | May 8, 2015
To continue on the series on team autonomy (see autonomy vs. leverage, autonomy vs. mission and autonomy vs. ownership), I wanted to add one more important dimension to this discussion which concerns the practical implications of working on large, multi-team...
by Marty Cagan | Apr 14, 2015
In my recent articles I have been exploring the critically important but complex topic of autonomy of product teams. First we discussed the trade-offs between autonomy and leverage, and then we discussed the trade-offs between autonomy and mission. From your...
by Marty Cagan | Apr 6, 2015
In my last article I discussed the trade-offs between the sometimes conflicting goals of team autonomy versus leverage. Quite a few of you wrote to me and said this was a hot topic at your company, and several asked about the same basic topic, but less from an...
by Marty Cagan | Mar 10, 2015
Virtually every leading tech company has jumped on the empowered, dedicated/durable, cross-functional, collaborative product team bandwagon, and I think things are much better for it. I don’t see very many companies that are still using the old models (primarily the...
by Marty Cagan | Jan 20, 2015
There are of course many ways to come up with significant new product ideas. Historically, the two main approaches have been: 1) to try to assess the market opportunities and pick potentially lucrative areas where significant pain exists; and 2) to look at what the...
by Marty Cagan | Dec 12, 2014
One of the tenets of Product Discovery, Lean UX and Lean Startup methodology in general, is to try and avoid or reduce waste. Mostly that means tackling the situation where we design, build, test and deploy a solution that fails to meet its objectives. However, in...
by Marty Cagan | Oct 28, 2014
In my last article I discussed the differences between an IT Mindset and a Product Mindset. I must have struck a chord because I heard from so many people, from all over the world, that they were stuck in an “IT Mindset” organization. Unsurprisingly, their next...
by Marty Cagan | Oct 14, 2014
The role of the product organization is to consistently deliver significant new value to the business through continuous product innovation. At a startup, the product team either innovates and provides real value or the startup dies. However, in larger, more...
by Marty Cagan | Sep 25, 2014
I have long written about the importance of dedicated, durable product teams and that we should always strive to optimize for the team and not for the individual function (e.g. product management, user experience design, engineering, test automation, data science,...
