📖 Inspired by Marty Cagan, BOOK REVIEW | How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
Summary
TLDRIn this review, Juan discusses Marty Cagan's book 'Inspired,' which is a guide for creating tech products that customers love. The book is particularly useful for product managers and those interested in problem management. Key topics include product discovery, building the right product, product team dynamics, and fostering a product culture. Cagan emphasizes the importance of continuous product discovery, working with diverse teams, and the challenges inherent in product management. The book serves as a guide to understanding modern product management principles and practices.
Takeaways
- 📚 The book 'Inspired' by Marty Cagan is a guide for creating tech products that customers love, particularly useful for product managers.
- 🔍 It emphasizes the importance of product discovery, focusing on building the right product by understanding customer needs and validating assumptions through various testing methods.
- 💡 The book discusses the necessity of continuous product discovery and testing with potential customers to gather feedback and refine product ideas.
- 👥 It highlights the composition and role of product teams, stressing the importance of cross-functional collaboration for end-to-end product development.
- 🛠 The script mentions the significance of aligning product teams with company vision and strategy, while allowing them autonomy to make decisions and drive product direction.
- 🍕 The concept of 'two-pizza teams' is introduced, suggesting optimal team size for effective communication and decision-making.
- 🌟 The importance of product culture is underscored, with the need for trust, empowerment, and innovation to foster successful product development.
- 🚀 Marty Cagan advocates for 'missionaries' over 'mercenaries' in product teams, seeking individuals committed to the product's success rather than just task completion.
- 📈 Being data-driven is a key theme, with product managers encouraged to leverage data for decision-making, validating assumptions, and understanding product adoption and market potential.
- 🤔 The script acknowledges the difficulty of product management, noting that even with the right steps, success is not guaranteed, and failures are part of the process.
- 🔄 It calls for a culture of innovation within companies, constantly challenging and improving practices, including agile methodologies and design thinking.
Q & A
What is the main focus of Marty Cagan's book 'Inspired'?
-The book 'Inspired' focuses on how to create tech products that customers love, covering topics relevant to product managers and those interested in problem management.
Why is product discovery emphasized in the book?
-Product discovery is emphasized because it is crucial to build the right product. The book discusses the importance of finding the right problem to solve and validating assumptions with potential customers through prototyping, testing, and validation.
What does Marty Cagan suggest about the composition of product teams?
-Marty Cagan suggests that product teams should consist of individuals who can deliver a product end-to-end, including product managers, designers, engineers, and potentially data scientists and marketing managers, working together to ensure the product meets user needs and is feasible.
How does the book address the role of a product manager within a team?
-The book highlights the role of a product manager as a key figure in identifying problems and finding solutions, working collaboratively with team members such as designers and engineers to create products that users love.
What is the significance of the 'two pizza team' concept mentioned in the book?
-The 'two pizza team' concept refers to the optimal size for a product team, suggesting that a team should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas, implying that smaller, more agile teams can own and manage the product development process more effectively.
How does Marty Cagan view the importance of product culture in a company?
-Marty Cagan views product culture as vital for success, emphasizing the need for a culture that trusts and enables product teams to take ownership and drive the products they are building.
What type of people does the book suggest should be part of product teams?
-The book suggests that product teams should consist of 'missionaries'—people who are passionate and committed to spreading the word about the product they are building, rather than 'mercenaries' who may lack long-term commitment.
Why is innovation within a company's product culture important according to the book?
-Innovation within a company's product culture is important as it allows for constant challenging of existing ways of working, adaptation to changing technologies, and the implementation of new practices that can lead to building more successful products.
How does the book discuss the use of data in product management?
-The book discusses the use of data in product management as a critical tool for making informed decisions, validating assumptions, understanding product adoption, and gauging market potential.
What challenges does Marty Cagan acknowledge in the product management process?
-Marty Cagan acknowledges that product management is inherently difficult, with challenges in execution, design, and getting the product right, even when following correct steps, and that failure is a common outcome for both startups and established companies.
What is the book's stance on being the ultimate guide for product managers?
-The book does not claim to be the ultimate guide for product managers but rather aims to guide readers in understanding product management principles and practices in modern companies, encouraging them to improve their approach.
Outlines
📚 Introduction to 'Inspired' by Marty Cagan
Juan introduces a review of Marty Cagan's book 'Inspired', which focuses on creating tech products that customers love. He clarifies that he will not provide a full summary but will discuss key topics and his thoughts on them. The book is aimed at product managers and entrepreneurs, especially in the tech industry, but its principles are broadly applicable with necessary adjustments for different industries. The main theme revolves around the importance of product discovery, emphasizing the difficulty of identifying the right product and solution, and the need for continuous testing and validation with potential customers to refine ideas and quickly discard bad ones.
👥 The Dynamics of Product Teams
This paragraph delves into the composition and role of product teams, which are responsible for delivering end-to-end products. Juan discusses the importance of having a cross-functional team including product managers, designers, and engineers, and the significance of each team member's contribution. The teams should have ownership and be empowered to make decisions aligned with the company's vision. The concept of 'two-pizza teams' is mentioned, highlighting the optimal size for effective teamwork. Additionally, the paragraph touches on the necessity for a supportive company culture that trusts and enables product teams to innovate and take responsibility for their work.
🌟 Building a Product Culture and the Role of Product Managers
Juan highlights the critical role of product culture in a company's success, emphasizing trust and empowerment as key elements. Marty Cagan discusses the importance of having a culture of innovation, where continuous improvement and adaptation to new technologies and practices are encouraged. The paragraph also stresses the need for product managers to be missionaries—individuals deeply committed to their product's success—rather than mercenaries who may lack long-term ownership. Data-driven decision-making is underscored as a fundamental aspect of product management, with the ability to analyze user behavior and market potential guiding product direction.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Product Discovery
💡Prototyping
💡Product Management
💡Product Teams
💡Two-Pizza Team
💡Product Culture
💡Data-Driven
💡Design Thinking
💡Innovation
💡Missionaries vs. Mercenaries
💡Product Execution
Highlights
The book 'Inspired' by Marty Cagan focuses on creating tech products that customers love and is particularly useful for product managers.
It emphasizes the importance of product discovery, ensuring that the right product is being built to solve the correct problems.
The book discusses various methods for validating assumptions, such as prototyping, testing, and seeking user feedback.
Marty Cagan stresses the significance of building the right product over simply building a product, highlighting the challenges in product discovery.
The role of product teams is explored, detailing the composition and responsibilities of end-to-end product delivery teams.
Product managers are encouraged to work closely with designers, engineers, and other stakeholders for a comprehensive product development.
The concept of 'two-pizza teams' is introduced, suggesting optimal team sizes for effective product management.
Ownership within product teams is highlighted as crucial for making independent decisions aligned with company vision and strategy.
The book touches on the importance of product culture, advocating for trust, empowerment, and innovation within companies.
Marty Cagan differentiates between 'missionaries' and 'mercenaries' in product teams, favoring those with a deep commitment to their work.
The book promotes a culture of innovation, challenging traditional practices and embracing new methodologies like agile and design thinking.
Data-driven decision making is underscored as essential for product managers to validate assumptions and understand product adoption.
Collaboration between product managers and data scientists is highlighted to gain deeper insights into product direction and user behavior.
The difficulty of product management is acknowledged, with the book providing guidance rather than a guaranteed formula for success.
The book does not claim to be the ultimate guide but offers valuable insights into modern product management practices.
Marty Cagan's book is recommended for those interested in understanding the principles of effective product management in tech companies.
The transcript suggests that while the book is valuable, it should be complemented with practical experience and other resources.
Transcripts
hey juan here a while ago some of you
asked me to make a review of the marty
kagan book inspired you might be
familiar with this book competition you
have read it and as the tagline says
this book is about how you can create
tech products that your customers love
so this should be a really good book for
people that are interested in problem
management so let's talk about what this
book is about so maybe before going into
the book i would like to say that i'm
not going to do a complete summary i
just want to go through some of the
topics that the book talks about and
what do i think about them as you can
imagine this is a book it covers quite
many topics and these topics are going
to be relevant in general to
people people in general that are going
to be working in positions like proud
managers or potentially of course pro
owners but if you are interested also in
building products some building tech
products especially this could be a very
interesting book for you to read and as
i said the book is focused for
pro managers working in tech companies
and but as marty mentions in the book
himself the principles for pro
management are relatively similar from
one industry to another but of course
the practices and the details are going
to be varying between one another so
there's going to be always adjustments
that need to be done depending on which
industry or what type of products are
you managing so one of the main topics
that is covered throughout the book and
is covered many many many times is the
topic of product discovery how important
it is to actually build the right
product it is not so easy to find what
is the right product and what is the
current problem that actually you should
be solving what is the best solution
that will solve that problem and how do
you find a large enough user audience
for that product that you are defining
in here marti covers many many many
different topics he talks about
different things like prototyping
testing validating the assumptions that
you have with different type of users
basically the focus is to make sure that
what you're building is the right thing
for your users this is always easier
said than done and it's very easy for
anybody to think that we know the
answers that we understand our customers
the best and we can come with the best
solutions but the reality is that that's
rarely the case so this requires a lot
of work when it comes to product
discovery and he actually talks about a
lot how can you be working continuously
in product discovery and doing a lot of
testing sessions with potential
customers continuously to get feedback
and actually try to find out those bad
ideas as soon as possible so you can
move them out of the way and concentrate
on the things that are actually going to
bring value to the users and he's not
only talking about a certain type of
testing and validation he's talking
about many different ways of validating
the product he talks about testing
feasibility testing usability testing
business viability so he covers many
different topics maybe not just the more
typical ui or user experience testing
scenarios that we typically more will be
talking about but he also concentrates a
lot on talking about the business side
which is something that many times is
kind of ignored by many people in
problem management the next topic the
marty covers a lot and these are by the
way no particular order of how they are
covered in the book is the
definition of product teams and he's not
talking about product when it's
maintenance he's talking about product
things that can deliver a product
end-to-end so here he talks a lot about
who should be in those teams and who
should be the ones that are actually
having to work together most of the time
to make sure that you are not only
taking the needs of the users but also
the needs of other units that are going
to be working in this product so how
much is this going to impact for example
the engineering team how are feasible a
solution actually is is there a better
solution that potentially the product
manager didn't come up with and it's
somebody that from the engineering team
that has the knowledge or the technical
knowledge to come up with potential
solutions so when talking about these
product teams he talks about the
different people that should be in this
thing typically of course there's going
to be a problem manager who is trying to
find out what is the problem and
actually find
the solution that is going to be the
best for the problem this doesn't mean
that the problem manager
he or she has to find the problem and
the solution on their own they have to
work with other people so here the prime
manager has to work a lot with the
product designer who is actually going
to look into how
this is going to work how the user is
going to interact with your product then
they're going to work a lot also with
people in the engineering teams
typically with some of them more than
others and there's going to be sometimes
like a checklist or a cto or whatever is
the position that is always going to be
more involved in making the decisions of
where the technology that the product is
based on is going on how it's going to
build what makes sense and what doesn't
make sense so working with them again is
going to be key also to understand the
potential effort of the development that
you are trying to do then depending on
the teams there are going to be
different parties involved this can be
test automation engineers are going to
make sure that what your building is so
healthy and not breaking there's going
to be people that are going to be data
scientists data engineers that are going
to make sure that you can get all the
data that you need on the usage and the
performance of the products that you're
building and then finally also there's
going to be people like pro marketing
managers that are going to look into how
we are going to promote the product once
it's going live to the users there might
be other stakeholders that are going to
actually be planning the launch of the
product that you will have to also
perhaps not include as a constant or
permanent members of these product teams
but they are going to be more like
virtual members of those teams why these
things are very important the idea with
these teams is that these teams have
ownership of the part of the product or
the whole product that they are managing
this means that they can make the
decisions of where the product is going
to go and how is it going to be built
this doesn't mean that they don't align
with the rest of the company of course
they have to align with the vision of
the company the strategy of the company
but once the framework is set then they
are good to go to do the planning the
road mapping on their own and delivering
those features on their own these are
the many times known as the two pizza
teams referring about the size of the
team here and then the idea is that
these themes own the whole end-to-end
process of delivering the product to the
users and yes here these things and in
these proteins typically are not going
to be other stakeholders involved like
the people that can give feedback on
what the customers are are doing or what
the customer needs are so those are just
usually considered as stakeholders
outside those teams this doesn't mean
that these product teams don't work with
those stakeholders the idea with these
productions is that they are empowered
and trusted to find the problems of the
users and being able to build those
solutions that your users are going to
love i know all the product teams are
going to be perfect and not all the
productions are going to be the same
level here is where you actually had to
help than the teams to get to those
levels here's the roles for the cto pro
directors cpos whatever is the title to
help and enable those teams to perform
as better as they can another big topic
that marty talks a lot in the inspire
book is about product culture having the
right product culture in the company is
why is going to help you succeed or not
if you don't have the right product
culture it's going to be very difficult
that you are actually going to succeed
building this type of products or
especially for tech products product
culture means that you are able to trust
and enable and
help those product teams to grow and
take ownership of what they're building
it is not an easy thing it's very easy
for many companies especially companies
that have been working a long time to
have a lack of trust in these
productions because the
understanding is that people don't know
how to do their work unless they are
managed and sometimes even micromanage
so being able to detach yourself and let
those teams grow and actually take the
ownership and drive those products on
their own is not an easy path and it's
not an easy thing to do for many
companies out there marty also talks
about the personality of the people that
you want to be in these productions you
want people especially when you think
about product management you want people
that are missionaries not people that
are mercenaries you want people that are
actually going to spread the word of
what they're building and making sure
that everybody out there hears about
what they are building you don't want
people that are mercenaries that are
really good at what they are doing but
they just can't to do the job and then
they move to the next one but not
necessarily with being able to
commit and have a
big ownership of what they are doing you
want people to really take ownership of
what they do and that they are able to
participate and help others getting
there also it's very important for the
prague culture to have a culture of
innovation within the company be able to
innovate constantly to challenge the
ways of working and i don't mean in a
bad way necessarily but understanding
that things are moving on the time
technology is changing all the time
there's better ways of doing many things
nowadays and it's not just about
technology but it's also about practices
agile is not a new thing anymore but
there's many companies that are not
implementing it right there's many other
processes out there like design thinking
that people are sorry maybe principals
out there that people are not taking
into account or they are not considering
when they are working with their
customers for example so there's always
better ways of doing things learning and
having a culture that promotes
innovation constantly in the company it
will help you a lot to build successful
products this in my opinion doesn't
restrict itself only to practice it
should also apply to anybody in the
company because there's always new ways
of doing marketing or to new ways of
selling products the next big topic that
marty talks about is product managers
that are data driven this is obviously
not a new thing obviously the book is
not a new book either but uh being data
driven and using all the data that you
have available to make decisions is
going to always help you a lot data can
be used in many different ways it can be
used to validate assumptions it can be
used to understand the adoption of a
product it can be understand the
potential size of a market it can be
used in many different ways being able
to work with data to understand data to
read analytics that works and also as
for the potential data that you need is
going to be very important for a product
manager and i see a lot of collaboration
more and more coming between product
managers data scientists to understand
better the directions that a product
potentially can be going users you
always have to have the in mind you
always have to work with them and here
is why design thinking and all these
different principles are very important
being able to also understand the data
and the behavior of mass large masses of
users how they behave with or how they
use your product is going to help you a
lot making decisions of which direction
the product can be going in the future
and then finally one topic that he comes
back and again and again is that product
is hard product management is hard pro
execution is hard product design is hard
it's really really difficult to get the
product right even if you do all the
correct steps that doesn't mean that you
are going to succeed but it's going to
help you to get there many times is
said the most of the startups out there
fail and this happens not just to
startups it has happens with established
companies startups is only more visible
because usually when they fail they
typically have one product and there it
goes the startup with big companies they
can fail in one product or in a big
feature but people are not going to
notice we've seen many times versions of
windows which are arguable not the best
ones ever
and other versions of microsoft windows
which are relatively okay or quite good
it depends on who you ask and not trying
to be here a microsoft lover or anything
like that but some of them they were
better obviously than others that
doesn't mean that the company bank goes
bankrupt or anything like that so but
that doesn't mean that windows 8 was a
very good version of windows but here
you can see for example that the company
can fail at delivering a product and the
product can be can fail at being adopted
by the users the company can still
continue but this doesn't mean the big
companies don't fail at problem
management so as i said the book covers
many other different topics but i think
that these were the very
big topics that it covered in my opinion
at least those where my kid takes us uh
what do you think
was there anything that he was talking
about that you thought that was also a
big topic at least in your opinion
please share in the comments below as
you can imagine i'm not trying to do a
summary realistically of the book i
think that the book is there so if
you're interested you should go and take
and take a look it's a really good book
it's
also something that you have to pay
attention it is a book so it's going to
help you to get into some directions
it's going to help you understanding the
principles it's not going to tell you
exactly everything it's not a course as
such so if you want a course
marty kagan has a business that goes
into that direction so is this book the
ultimate guide the book that every
single pro manager out there has to read
well no i don't think that there's such
a book that can be considered the
ultimate guide to pretty much anything
out there what this book does very well
is just to help you to guide you to
understand what proud management is and
how is done in modern companies and how
can you do it in a better way i will
leave the link of where you can purchase
the book down below if you have read the
book uh i would love to hear your
thoughts about it uh how did you find it
how
was your experience and what were your
key takeouts and did you find it this to
be a useful read or not i will see you
in the next one and remember stay safe
[Music]
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