Key Notes: "Inspired" by Marty Cagan (Part 2 / 5)

Disclaimer: This article is a work in progress and will be updated with new articles / parts which will be linked below.

Part 2: The Right People

CHAPTER 9: Principles of Strong Product Teams

Product teams, often referred to as "squads," are cross-functional groups that bring together diverse skills and responsibilities to take full ownership of a product or a significant segment of a larger product.

Team of Missionaries

John Doerr, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist, emphasizes the need for "teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries." Mercenaries follow orders without question, while missionaries are deeply invested in the vision, committed to solving customer problems.

Team Composition

A standard product team typically includes a product manager, a product designer, and between two to twelve engineers. If the project is not user-facing, a product designer may not be necessary. Additional members might include a product marketing manager, test automation engineers, a user researcher, a data analyst, and, in larger organizations, a delivery manager.

Team Empowerment and Accountability

Teams are given clear objectives and are responsible for solving complex problems while being accountable for the results.

Team Size

There's a practical upper limit for team size, generally about 8-12 engineers. The "two-pizza rule" suggests teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas, promoting efficiency. More critical than the team size is having the right balance of skills to ensure the team builds the right solutions and does so effectively.

Team Reporting Structure

Product teams often have a flat organizational structure, where everyone is an individual contributor with no direct people management roles. Team members typically report to their functional managers.

Team Collaboration

A product team consists of highly skilled individuals who collaborate over extended periods to tackle challenging business problems.

Team Location

Co-location means team members physically sit next to each other, which often leads to better performance compared to dispersed teams.

Team Scope

Work is divided into two dimensions:

1. Type of work: Covers all aspects, including projects, features, bug fixes, performance enhancements, optimizations, and content changes.
2. Scope of work: Involves handling a complete product or a smaller, significant component of an experience.

Products can be segmented by user type, device type, workflow, customer journey, or architecture, which determines the technology stack and required engineering expertise. Alignment between product management and engineering is crucial, as it influences the size and scope of the teams, often decided by the heads of product and engineering.

Team Duration

The dynamics within a team are vital, as members must learn to work well together. The durability of a team is essential for developing the expertise needed for innovation, which can take months or even years.

Team Autonomy

To effectively address customer needs, teams require autonomy and should have minimal dependencies on other teams.

Why It Works

• Collaboration thrives on strong relationships, fostered by co-located teams.
• Innovation demands expertise, which is cultivated through the stable composition of product teams.
• Every member of the team comprehends the business objectives and context, fostering a sense of ownership and accountability for outcomes.

Unlike a project-oriented approach, the dedicated product team model ensures continuous responsibility beyond launch, striving for user and business success. Transitioning to this model can begin with a pilot team, but ultimately, establishing or integrating into a stable product team is essential for success.

CHAPTER 10: The Product Manager

3 Essential Ways a Product Manager Role Works

1. Backlog Administrator: Escalate every issue and decision up to the CEO.
2. Roadmap Administrator: Call meetings with all stakeholders.
3. Product Management: Effectively manage and execute the role.

The third option is the most effective way for a product manager to function. A product manager should be the strongest talent in the company. Without technical or business expertise, credibility with key executives, deep customer knowledge, or passion for the product, and respect from their team, failure is inevitable.

Key Responsibilities

As a product manager, the responsibility lies in evaluating opportunities and determining what gets built and delivered to customers. The business’s success depends on its customers, and the product is a result of what the product team builds. The product manager is responsible for guiding the team’s efforts. When a product succeeds, it’s due to the contributions of the whole team. However, when a product fails, the fault lies with the product manager.

4 Key Responsibilities of a Strong Product Manager

1. Deep Knowledge of the Customer: Become an expert on customer issues, pains, desires, thought processes, and, for business products, their work processes and decision-making. This requires both qualitative and quantitative insights.
2. Deep Knowledge of the Data: Be comfortable with data and analytics, including sales analytics, usage analytics, and A/B testing, to understand customers better.
3. Deep Knowledge of the Business: Successful products must satisfy both customers and business needs. Understand stakeholders and their constraints, and deliver solutions consistent with those constraints.
4. Deep Knowledge of Market and Industry: Stay informed about technology trends, customer behaviors and expectations, industry analyst views, and the role of social media.

Smart, Creative, and Persistent

A successful product manager must embody the best versions of these traits:

• Smart: Quick learning, applying new technologies to solve customer problems, and enabling new business models.
• Creative: Thinking outside the box to solve business problems beyond standard product features.
• Persistent: Pushing boundaries with compelling evidence, maintaining constant communication, and fostering cross-functional collaboration despite resistance.

Passion for products and solving customer problems is innate and cannot be taught. To succeed:

• Become an expert in users and customers, sharing what you learn openly.
• Establish strong relationships with key stakeholders and business partners, understanding and working within their constraints.
• Become an undisputed expert on the product and industry, sharing your knowledge openly.
• Foster a strong, collaborative relationship with your product team.

Product Manager Profiles

Insights from successful individuals in large corporations reveal that:

• Product management is distinct from other disciplines, akin to a CEO role although not a boss.
• A product manager must understand all aspects of the business like a CEO.
• Winning solutions arise from intense collaboration with design and engineering, not just from users, customers, or sales.
• True leadership differentiates great product managers from good ones.

Product Manager vs Product Owner

The product owner, a role on an agile team, is responsible for the product backlog and is a subset of product management responsibilities.

The Two Critical Classes for Product Managers

Product managers come from diverse backgrounds but especially benefit from two academic courses:

1. Introduction to Computer Programming
2. Introduction to Business Accounting/ Finance