Ensuring Excellence An Article by Marty Cagan www.svpg.com …in so many of the best product companies there is an additional dimension that goes beyond individual empowered product teams, and even goes beyond achieving business results. It has to do with ensuring a level of what I’ll refer to here as “excellence” although that is clearly a very ambiguous term. Over the years, this concept has been referred to by many different names, always necessarily vague, but all striving to convey the same thing: “desirability,” “aha moments,” “wow factor,” “magic experiences,” or “customer delight,” to list just a few. The concept is that an effective product that achieves results is critical, but sometimes we want to go even beyond that, to provide something special. Maybe it’s because we believe this is needed to achieve the necessary value. Maybe it’s because the company has built its brand on inspiring customers. Often this dimension shows up most clearly in product design, where functional, usable but uninspiring designs can often achieve our business results, but great design can propel us into this realm of the inspiring. Do they really need it? qualitycraftproductssoftware
The Nature of Product An Article by Marty Cagan www.svpg.com Too many product managers and product designers want to spend all their time in problem discovery, and not get their hands dirty in solution discovery – the whole nonsense of “product managers are responsible for the what and not the how.” On GreatnessOne Of Us uxproductsproblemsdesign
Product vs. Feature Teams An Article by Marty Cagan svpg.com This article is certain to upset many people. Empowered product teamsViability, usablity, feasibilityWhat went wrong? featuressoftwareagile
Silicon Valley Product Group A Website by Marty Cagan svpg.com The best companies go about building great products differently. Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) was created to share lessons learned and best practices about how to build innovative products customers love softwareleadership
The way we usually do infrastructure A Fragment by Noah Smith noahpinion.substack.com The bipartisan deal contains a pot of money to repair America’s roads and bridges, and build a few more besides. This is the way we usually do infrastructure in America. First we build a ton of roads and bridges that are highly expensive to maintain, especially with our ruinously high construction costs (see this recent article by Jerusalem Demsas). Then, because costs are so high, we wait for a long time to repair the roads and bridges, until civil engineers start screeching, roads get potholed, and there’s a bridge collapse or two. Then we muster up the political will to throw the requisite shit-ton of money at the problem, the potholes and weak bridges get repaired for twice the amount it would have cost had we done it on a regular schedule and three times the amount it would cost if we were a normal rich country. And the whole cycle begins again. infrastructurerepairpolitics