Book Series: Inspired by Marty Cagan
This week I will be reading, synthesizing and meditating on the book “Inspired: How to create tech product customers love” 2nd Edition by Marty Cagan.
This book was recommended to me by my previous manager who is an excellent Product Manager. It is considered one of the most influential books in Product Management.
Preface
- This book is dedicated to Technology Product Managers and it is expected to be a “go-to resource” for product managers.
- What this book is not: This book is not a prescriptive guide for how to create a product that customers/users love
- What this book is: It is a guide for creating the right product culture that leads to success and it is equipped with tools that can help tackle any product issue you are currently facing (product discovery or delivery techniques)
Important things to know about Product Management:
- The job of a product manager is not in any sense easy
- However, Product Management is one of the most coveted jobs in the industry today and it is a leading source of start-up CEOs
Part 1: Lessons from the Top Tech Companies
“It doesn’t matter how good our engineering team is if they are not given something worthwhile to build”
Case-Study: HP AI Workstation in the 1980s
The author worked on a complex project while at HP in the 1980s and the project pretty much flopped. He and his engineering team were incredibly frustrated with how much work, energy time etc. invested in a project that was dead on arrival.
“I promised myself that never again would I work so hard on a product unless I knew the product would be something that users and customers wanted” — Engineer’s comment
Food for thought:
- Why is it frustrating for an engineer to work hard on a project that fails? (Especially because they did their part)
- How does it make an engineer feel when they work on a project and it does not pan out well?
There is a tremendous difference between how the best companies produced products and how most companies produced them.
The “state of art” is remarkably different from the “state of practice” and there is little being done to close this gap.
Little information is being churned out by academia and industry organizations.
Most companies still practise old, inefficient principles to discover and deliver products. Most companies, academia, and industry organizations are stuck in the failed models of the past. And they are often not aware of it
Most product leaders want to create inspiring and value-creating products. Products that change the game. Products that flip the landscape and deliver something brand new to the tech ecosystem
However, they are too many products that are not inspiring and life is too short for bad products
