Transformed: Moving to the product-operating model with Marty Cagan
On April 22, we welcomed Marty Cagan at our ProductTank community to discuss insights from his latest book, "TRANSFORMED."
Marty Cagan, Founder and Partner of Silicon Valley Product Group , and author of ”Inspired” and “Empowered”, he has been passionate about studying how the best product organizations work. Over the course of his work, Marty shares the techniques and practices of the best product companies, and while these companies have their own unique product culture, they all share the same fundamental principles.
His new book, TRANSFORMED: Moving to the Product Operating Model, aims to bridge the gap between where most companies are right now and where they need to be in order to compete in today's rapidly evolving business landscape.
You can find the slides from the event here.
The Product Operating Model: How does a company transform to working like the best product companies?
‘Transformed’ book has seven case studies of real companies, none of which Netflix or the Amazons, but older and traditional companies from all over the world (Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Germany) that changed to work like the best companies.
So let's start with the term product operating model. Marty defines that there are three things best product organizations do differently:
How you build: How do you build, test, deploy your product? Are you releasing at least every 2 weeks, or monthly, quarterly?
How you solve problems: If you are just building roadmaps of features and projects, then you're not solving problems at all. An empowered product team must perform product discovery. They are given a problem to solve and are held accountable for the outcomes, not the outputs.
How you decide which problems to solve: Now, this is product strategy. This is what product strategy is really about. It's looking holistically at the opportunities in front of your company and making sure you're picking the most impactful opportunities and addressing the most serious threats to the business. So, getting serious about product strategy is the third big dimension of the product model.
So, at the top level, changing or looking at how you build, solve problems, and decide which problems to solve is really how we look at the overall product model.
Who owns product strategy?
The product manager is responsible for the value and the viability of what the team builds, and they are the ones that are ultimately accountable for the results of the product team. A big misconception is that every product manager has to have their own product vision, they need their own product strategy. If you've got 20 product teams, which is very common, do you seriously want 20 product visionsor 20 product strategies?
Product strategies are powered by insights from customers, data, technology, and the market.
The principles of the team
Companies like Apple and Netflix have different cultures but the principles they emphasize in product development are relatively the same:
Teams are empowered to come up with solutions to problems
They are held accountable for outcomes, not outputs
As Marty Cagan describes, the product operating model focuses on creating technology-powered solutions that delight customers and align with business objectives. This model represents a shift affecting roles and responsibilities across the organization and requires leadership to navigate change challenges.
“What does it really mean to transform to the product model? Transformation really means changing how you build, changing how you solve problems, introducing product discovery, and changing how you decide which problems to solve.”
Thank you, everyone, for coming, and we will see you at the next event on World Product Day on May 15!