post

Footer About

Footer Contribute

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Microsoft lays off 3% of workforce while renogiating partnership with OpenAI

Podcast

How to build the right product culture during transformation – Joca Torres (Product Consultant)

B2B product management

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

Context, intent, change, purpose, constraints – a model for communicating requirements

5 difficult conversations and how to have them

DoorDash eats Deliveroo while OpenAI makes its biggest buy: This week’s news roundup

Why great product managers think like therapists

Tools and techniques to scale product teams – Charlotte King (Lead Product Manager, eBay)

Andres is a freelance writer and digital marketer with a background in engineering and a keen interest in the latest technology advancements. He currently helps tech companies and startups tell their stories by turning their complex ideas into easy to understand material. You can reach out to him on LinkedIn

Andres Phillips

<p>In this <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank-about/content/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ProductTank Zurich</a> talk, <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/tag/marty-cagan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marty Cagan</a>, Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group sits down for a Fireside chat to answer questions about his career and advise other product managers.</p>
<p>Watch the entire session in full, or read on to hear what he has to say about:</p>
<ul>
<li>Why there is so much noise and confusion in the product community</li>
<li>Empowering product managers</li>
<li>What a product manager does</li>
<li>Convincing project-oriented companies to become more product-oriented</li>
<li>Becoming more product-led</li>
</ul>
<h2>Why there is so much noise and confusion in the product community</h2>
<p>Marty enjoys getting questions about product management, but sometimes the same questions keep popping up because there are actually many different and conflicting opinions causing confusion, particularly for new product managers. Marty explains that his wish is for every new product manager to have a capable and experienced product manager to help them get better at their job.</p>
<p>When asked if that&#8217;s one of the reasons he writes, Marty explains that he sees each article as the MVP for a book chapter. The best product managers often know about these things, but several others are surprised at what they read, indicating the gap between good product companies and the rest.</p>
<h2>Empowering product managers</h2>
<p>One of the reasons behind the gap between the best product companies and the others and why product managers don&#8217;t feel empowered is because there isn&#8217;t a clear enough distinction between product owners and product managers. As Marty explains, a product owner is a role on an agile team but should be a product manager at the end of the day, even though this isn&#8217;t always the case.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/leading-empowered-product-teams-ama-with-hope-gurion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Watch: Leading empowered product teams: AMA with Hope Gurion</a></p>
<h2>What a product manager does</h2>
<p>Marty points out that they&#8217;ve never seen product management done well in some companies, which can make it difficult for them to be good product-led companies. Company leadership refers to CEOs and product leadership to CPOs, whereas a product owner is just a role that a product manager has. Therefore, the product manager is responsible for solutions built and ensuring that they are both valuable and viable. They need deep knowledge of the customer, data, industry, and company to do this. When asked about a product manager&#8217;s skills, Marty explained that a product manager needs to learn every part of the business, so it&#8217;s best if they are already familiar with two sections, such as design and engineering or sales and marketing.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s vital to assess product people to see what they&#8217;re good at and identify ways to get better, as everyone can benefit from coaching.</p>
<h2>Convincing project-oriented companies to become more product-oriented</h2>
<p>To become product-oriented instead of project-oriented, the company culture must be transformed. However, this is hard to do because there are politics involved. Convincing product managers, designers, and engineers is easy, but change needs to go beyond product and technologies as it impacts everything else. Accomplishing this takes the support of the CEO. However, as Marty points out, if companies don&#8217;t do this before it gets too late, they might not survive.</p>
<h2>Becoming more product-led</h2>
<p>Marty then shifted his attention to CEOs seeking to make their companies more product-led. He explained that as a CEO, you don&#8217;t need to be an expert, but you do need to be supportive. Sometimes CEOs need to replace people because they have people who don&#8217;t know what they need to do. This might involve investing in product coaches to help train promising people and set them up to do the job better. If you have the right people in place, you can succeed. However, without a true product leader or technology leader, you risk repeating previous problems. The chat continued with a series of questions from the audience.</p>
<h2>Enjoy more ProductTank content</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank-about/content/">ProductTanks</a> are informal meetups, created by Mind the Product, to bring local product people together and to enable speakers to share amazing product insights. Today we have ProductTanks in more than 200 cities across the globe and there’s probably one near you.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank-about/">Learn more about ProductTank</a> – find your local meetup, explore more ProductTank content, see the latest ProductTank news, and discover ways to get involved!</p>


core/freeform

How do you avoid burnout in product management?

Susana Lopes: Embracing a dual-track career ladder in product

Career clinic for product managers by John Cutler

Hiring product managers by Kate Leto

Identify and manage imposter syndrome by Phyllis Njoroge

From PO to CPO: How to drive your product career by Namrata Sarmah

Learnings from London: The secret sauce to hiring great product people by Kate Leto

Building the perfect product manager: A model for professional development by Greg Prickril

Fireside chat with Marty Cagan

From engineering to product management at Google

ProductTank Pune

ProductTank Hyderabad

ProductTank Valencia

ProductTank Auckland

ProductTank Helsinki

ProductTank Barcelona

ProductTank Lomé

ProductTank Wellington

ProductTank San Diego

ProductTank Canberra

ProductTank Perth

ProductTank Hong Kong

ProductTank Bangkok

ProductTank Doha

ProductTank Tel Aviv-Yafo

ProductTank Baku

ProductTank Reston

ProductTank Raleigh

ProductTank Charlotte

ProductTank Washington

ProductTank Richmond

ProductTank Cluj-Napoca

ProductTank Zagreb

ProductTank Amsterdam

ProductTank Edinburgh

ProductTank Paris

ProductTank Hamburg

ProductTank München

ProductTank Manchester

ProductTank Bristol

ProductTank Oxford

ProductTank Madrid

ProductTank Des Moines

ProductTank Dallas

ProductTank Portland

ProductTank Curitiba

ProductTank Chicago

ProductTank Austin

ProductTank Philadelphia

ProductTank Montevideo

ProductTank São Paulo

ProductTank Los Angeles

ProductTank Gdansk

ProductTank Stuttgart

ProductTank Pittsburgh

ProductTank Bangalore

ProductTank Chennai

ProductTank Mumbai

ProductTank Fribourg

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank Zürich

ProductTank Newcastle Upon Tyne

ProductTank Jacksonville

ProductTank Florianópolis

ProductTank Tallinn

ProductTank Denver

ProductTank San Francisco

ProductTank Sheffield

ProductTank Tokyo

ProductTank Valletta

ProductTank Bologna

ProductTank Vancouver

ProductTank Milano

ProductTank Columbus

ProductTank Belfast

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank Seattle

ProductTank Lausanne

Product Management Foundations BST

Product Management Foundations ET

ProductTank Reading

ProductTank Bielefeld

Communication & Alignment BST

Communication & Alignment ET

ProductTank Frankfurt

ProductTank Bonn