INSPIRED

How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

Marty Cagan
Wiley © 2017
368 pages
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Rating Take-Aways

8
9 Applicability • The culture surrounding product teams must nourish innovation.
8 Innovation • Product teams should consist of “missionaries” with a shared vision, not “mercenaries”
8 Style who work only for pay.

• While a successful product is a result of the team’s effort, an unsuccessful product

outcome resides with the product manager.
 
Focus • The best product teams utilize the strongest aspects of Lean and Agile .

• Product teams should be flat organizationally, with staff reporting to their functional
Leadership & Management leaders, not to the product manager .
Strategy
Sales & Marketing
• Managers, designers and engineers should collaborate to find solutions.
Finance • As companies grow, they should add executive product, design and technology
Human Resources positions.
IT, Production & Logistics
• Product teams should understand the firm’s business objectives and its product
Career & Self-Development
development vision and strategy .
Small Business
Economics & Politics • Perform discovery before anyone writes a line of code.
Industries
• A “discovery sprint” can change the direction of the product and company.
Global Business
Concepts & Trends

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getabstract

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Relevance
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What You Will Learn
In this summary, you will learn: r1) How to create dynamic and effective product teams and leverage product
discovery techniques, 2) What staff roles growth-stage and enterprise companies must fill for successful product
development, and 3) What methods you can use to stage a “discovery sprint.”
getabstract
Recommendation
With this second edition, Silicon Valley Product Group founder Marty Cagan returns to inspire innovative
product managers and growing technology companies. In his new look at technology product development,
he acknowledges the standardization of Lean and Agile development, and looks beyond both to discuss
developing technology products at scale. Cagan details how to establish a strong product team, how to prepare a
product introduction and how to innovate for success. Cagan’s first groundbreaking edition opened up a new world to
product development. This redone edition, which retains the structure of the first book, enables newcomers to leverage
his knowledge of developing tech products. Given Cagan’s details about personnel, job descriptions and product
discovery, getAbstract recommends this overview to future and current tech product managers, to senior engineers
and to executives seeking to understand the behind-the-scenes workings of technology product development.
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Summary
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Product Team Culture
If you are a growing technology company leader who finds that your products lack
innovation, check on the culture surrounding your product teams. Many start-ups are good
getabstract at quickly delivering sustained, innovative products. But as companies grow, this ability can
“I want to emphasize
how important it is deteriorate. Leaders often attribute this lapse in innovation to the quality of their employees,
for…every product the firm’s processes or communication among increasingly diverse moving parts. But the
team to know how their
work contributes to the way to prevent innovation from faltering is to hone your culture. Strong product teams
larger whole and what reflect a corporate culture in which they can innovate and execute superior consumer
the company needs
them to focus on right technology products.
now.”
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Product teams should consist of “missionaries” with a shared vision, not “mercenaries”
who work only for pay. Corporate executives need to embrace this new culture and forgo
quarterly product road maps. Hire a CEO who contributes intellect and talent and who never
advocates cookie-cutter processes in the face of flagging product success. This culture of
strong product teams distinguishes Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix, among other
successful companies.

getabstract Avoid Waterfalls

“My focus is on the
unique issues and
At start-up, the product managers are often founders or the CEO. In this early stage,
challenges associated company leaders have minimal required administrative duties and can adapt quickly. While
with building few start-ups succeed, those that do have an effective product discovery process. Eventually,
technology-powered
products, services and growth-stage and enterprise companies may lean on the value and brand they created in the
experiences.” past instead of instituting further product innovation.
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Most companies follow a “waterfall process” with engineers who use Agile when they can.
This outdated product development mode raises serious issues such as business cases that
ask engineers to calculate impossible-to-estimate costs; road maps that prioritize features

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 and projects; product managers who are essentially project managers; ideas from sales and
other stakeholders that must be considered and “lipstick on the pig” product design that
comes in too late to be useful. Other problems occur when product teams introduce Agile too
getabstract late into the product cycle and use engineers – the drivers of innovation – only to code. These
“The product manager issues lead to higher opportunity costs in lost time and money as the waterfall process
has some very specific
and very challenging continues to flow. Effective product teams apply the best of Lean and Agile by following
responsibilities…and these principles:
anyone who tries to tell
you otherwise is not
doing you any favors.” 1. Deal with risks – in value, usability, feasibility and business viability – first, before
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building anything.
2. Designers, product managers and engineers should collaborate in all phases of product
development.
3. The product team should focus on solving the problem – that is, providing business
results – rather than on implementing solutions.

Product Teams
The people on your team and their job descriptions and responsibilities are crucial in
getabstract
“It doesn’t matter how defining elements of success or failure. Don’t keep your product team in a silo; let it
good your engineering be cross-functional. A strong project team culture builds the team’s efficacy. A strong
team is if they are
not given something product team feels like a start-up unit – passionate, flexible and fast – within the larger
worthwhile to build.” organization. The team uses a flat organizational structure, and members report to their
getabstract
functional managers. Usually this team includes a product manager, a designer, and two to
12 engineers. Depending on the product, the team may also include a product marketing
manager, test automation engineer, user researcher, data analyst and, in larger companies,
a delivery manager.

The team should be collaborative. The three disciplines of product, design and engineering
must work together nonhierarchically to find solutions. Team members should be co-located
employees, not contractors. A co-located team will “substantially outperform a dispersed
getabstract team.” One team should be responsible for all the features, fixes, performance, optimization
“It’s easy to get hung
up on the minutiae…but and content of its product – or of a significant part of it. The company should keep the group
what’s really important together and stable so it can amass sufficient expertise to innovate. This is usually easier in
here is creating the
right product culture
a smaller company, but growth-stage and enterprise companies can scale up as needed. To
for success.” maintain a product team’s missionary zeal, grant it the autonomy to solve problems while
getabstract
making sure that the members understand the business context and objectives. This 360-
degree view gives the team ownership of its outcomes.

Older models for product teams focused on moving through a defined process up to delivery.
The new, more effective model focuses on having the team keep working until the product
meets company and customer expectations. Teams should reflect the firm’s investment
strategy, have minimum dependencies, be empowered, be large or small enough for the job,
have a relevant vision and strategy, and align with the business and the user. Review the
getabstract team’s structure annually to make sure it continues to serve the firm’s needs.
“For most types of
businesses, I encourage
teams to construct Product Managers
product strategy around
a series of product/ Product managers make sure all aspects of the development process work together.
market fits.” This manager should be a company star with the necessary technical, business and customer
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knowledge, a zeal for the products, good relationships with top executives and the respect
of the product team. If this leader lacks any of these elements, the product will probably fail.
While a successful product is a result of the team’s work, an unsuccessful product outcome
resides with the product manager.

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 Growing companies need strong executives in product management, product design and
technology. These leaders must work together, take a holistic view of the product; review
the team’s work; remove obstacles from its path; solve conflicts; and ensure continuity
getabstract for the user experience and architecture. The product leader needs a solid business and
“Even with ideas
that do prove to have tech background. He or she must excel at team development; support a strong product
potential, it typically culture; have a solid sense of the product vision and strategy; complement the CEO’s
takes several iterations
to get…this idea to the perspective; and get along well with the CEO and Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
point where it delivers
the necessary business
value.” The CTO should not report to the Chief Information Officer (CIO). That arrangement
getabstract is a warning flag of a faulty process and has been the cause of many failed products.
The CTO’s main responsibility is building and retaining a strong management team that
develops staff skills and leadership abilities. The CTO must produce quality products
quickly; make sure the architecture can deliver as required; keep senior engineers active
throughout product discovery; and zealously support the engineering side of the company.

The Product
getabstract A holistic definition of a product would cover its functionality, technology, user
“A product
team…bring[s] experience design, offline elements, and methods for gaining users or customers and
together different for generating money from the product. Management might want road maps to make sure
specialized skills and
responsibilities and that the firm’s teams work on the highest-value elements and to carry out the planning that
feel[s] real ownership enables coordination across the company. Beware that most road maps result in wasted
for a product.”
getabstract effort and failed products.

The company needs to build a strong, modern product team and give them sufficient
information on the product vision and strategy – as well as business objectives – so
they can find the best solutions for their assigned problems. Teams can communicate
their product vision on a storyboard, in a white paper or through a prototype. These
“visiontypes” relay the vision and inspire the team, stakeholders and, often, potential
getabstract customers. They move the vision to reality. Product strategy is a series of planned deliveries
“If we want teams to to make the product vision concrete. The strategy must allow the product team to coordinate
feel empowered and
have missionary-like with sales and marketing units.
passion for solving
customer problems,
we need to give them
Discovery
a significant degree of Cross-functional teams can handle product discovery and delivery, and carry out both steps
autonomy.” in tandem. In terms of defining a process, no single path is “correct”. Discovery is a quick
getabstract
way to separate good from bad ideas while producing a validated product. It answers
such questions as whether engineers can build the product; whether users will buy it;
whether stakeholders support it; and whether customers understand how to use it. Discovery
works through all the risks of creating a product before the team writes “even one line of
production software.” Discovery techniques include:

• Framing – to identify issues that should be dealt with during product discovery and to
getabstract understand how that effort fits into the firm’s other work.
“Even with the best of
intentions, product road
• Planning throughout the discovery process – to target large issues and decide how to deal
maps typically lead with them.
to very poor business • “Ideation” – to help generate useful solutions to the project’s issues.
results.”
getabstract • Prototyping to help evaluate risks.
• Testing – to determine the product’s feasibility, usability, value, business viability,
demand, and quantitative and qualitative values.
• Transformation – to move the company away from working under its current methods
and toward a more productive strategy.

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 Prototype as King
In product discovery, teams use prototypes to run numerous – about 10 to 20 weekly
– fast experiments cheaply. Choose among many kinds of prototypes, depending on
what you need to test. They all require “at least an order of magnitude” less time and
getabstract expense than building the product. Team engineers should write minimal but sufficient
“It’s a constant
struggle between
code for feasibility prototypes, which can test new algorithms or technology. Teams can use
those executives… these tests, which should take only a day or two, to determine if an idea is worth pursuing.
who are trying to run
the business and the
product team that A user prototype can run the gamut from one-dimensional, “low-fidelity” to “high-fidelity”
is understandably user prototypes, which are simulations, but appear on the surface to be real. Live-data
reluctant to commit
to dates and prototypes need to work well enough to collect data, but only for specific case uses, and
deliverables.” should include 5% to 10% of the eventual delivery. Usually, these prototypes are necessary
getabstract
to address the significant risks that are present in discovery. Your engineers must create
them, not your designers. And even if the test version goes well, never deliver it as your
final product. Hybrid prototypes include elements of feasibility, user compatibility and live-
data testing. Consider the Wizard of Oz-kind of prototype, which looks like a real system to
the user, although an unseen person performs tasks manually that eventually will convert
to automation. This prototype is never scalable.

Discovery should uncover issues. You must learn whether customers want your
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“Getting product teams product. Demand testing, along with qualitative and quantitative value testing, can help
and companies to apply determine if customers demonstrate a demand for a feature or element and, if not, why not.
the new techniques and
work differently is often Conduct tests with actual users and customers.
easier said than done.”
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Talking about transforming the way companies create products is easy; making the
necessary changes is much harder. One current technique is to carry out a “discovery sprint”
in either planning or prototyping. This method calls for conducting an encapsulated week of
discovery, with the goal of solving a large problem or addressing a major risk that confronts
the product team.

Google Ventures (GV) created a team to help start-ups it invested in by working side-by-side
with them for a week. The goal was to work through dozens of product ideas and to solve
major business issues. These joint sessions resulted in new ideas and a fresh awareness that
significantly affected the product or company. To this end, the GV team wrote Sprint: How
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“The first truth is that to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, which offers sound guidance
at least half of our and a detailed structure teams can use to make the week a success.
ideas are just not going
to work.”
getabstract Perhaps the most difficult task that growing companies face is balancing standardization
with innovation. Moving from the flexible, fast pace of a creative start-up to a growth-stage
or enterprise company with an established brand or product is challenging. Leaders must
make sure that the company creates and fosters a strong product culture to allow product
teams to flourish.

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About the Author
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Marty Cagan, the former senior vice president for product and design for eBay, founded the Silicon Valley Product
Group.

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