Marty Cagan

Principles are our summary of their public statements.

• Active Obstacle Removal

  Leadership

  Leaders must actively identify and resolve barriers like team dependencies or technical gaps to ensure progress.

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source Product Strategy - Management, 2020  (opens in a new tab)

• Separate Discovery from Delivery

  Product

  Teams should use rapid, low-cost experiments to validate ideas before committing engineers to build robust, scalable, and production-quality code.

  Supporting quotes

  • “Doing all this work when the product manager isn't even sure this is the solution the customer wants or needs is a recipe for big waste.”

    “we need to make sure we come up with a single solution that works for many customers, and not a series of specials.”

  1 more supporting quote is in the member records.

• Challenge Hiring Stereotypes

  Management

  Avoid restricting the talent pool by filtering for native language skills or specific mental images of a leader.

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source Youth versus Experience, 2005  (opens in a new tab)

• Trade Features for Stability

  Strategy

  If a product is unstable, the team should sacrifice new features to invest time in fixing the core quality, tools, and processes.

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source Back to Basics, 2006  (opens in a new tab)

• Avoid Fragmented Visions

  Strategy

  A product vision should cover as much of the organization as possible to act as a common north star, rather than being split into small, disconnected team-level goals.

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source Product Vision FAQ, 2020  (opens in a new tab)

• Build innovation muscles early

  Strategy

  Companies should develop the ability to move quickly and effectively before they are in serious trouble.

  Supporting quotes

  • “The time to prepare for war, if you're not already, is when you are at peace.”

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

• Show, Don't Just Ask

  Customers

  Since customers cannot envision what they haven't seen, use prototypes to help them realize the potential of a new solution.

  Supporting quotes

  • “The truth is that customers are consistently not the source of true value creation and innovation.”

    “customers don't know what's possible; and b) customers don't know what they want until after they see it.”

  1 more supporting quote is in the member records.

• Eliminate Customer Proxies

  Product

  Product managers, designers, and engineers must interact directly with users instead of relying on sales or account managers as intermediaries.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source Pledge To Customers, 2022  (opens in a new tab)

• Generalize for Market Viability

  Strategy

  Ensure every solution solves a specific customer's problem while remaining general enough to serve the broader market.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source Pledge To Customers, 2022  (opens in a new tab)

• Leverage finance for business cases

  Management

  Collaborate with finance professionals to build credible business cases for new ideas and gain support from senior management.

  Supporting quotes

  • “In my experience, most product managers, especially technical product managers, have only a very shallow understanding of how their product (or their company) makes money.”

  1 more supporting quote is in the member records.

• Collaborate From Day One

  Team

  Include lead developers and designers at the very start of a project to ensure technical feasibility and strong user experience from the beginning.

  Supporting quotes

  • “One of the biggest reasons that companies cease to innovate is that they are scared. They're scared of putting existing revenue at risk, or of damaging their brand, or of angering partners or customers.”

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

• Prioritize Depth Over Scale

  Hiring

  Maintain high standards by only hiring partners who have personally led successful transformations at major tech companies.

  Supporting quotes

  • “it's not so much that we don't want to grow, it's that we believe that in order to successfully do what SVPG does, it requires an unusual blend of talent and experience.”

  2 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

• Minimize Delivery Costs

  Product

  Products should be modular and scalable to ensure they can run on low-cost, conventional hardware for the end user.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source The HP AI Workstation, 2021  (opens in a new tab)

• Develop product sense through inquiry

  Learning

  Use AI to learn about industry, competition, and customers by seeking critique and deep understanding rather than simple affirmation.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source Product Coaching and AI, 2026  (opens in a new tab)

• Avoid Splitting Strategic Responsibility

  Leadership

  Do not divide the PM role into separate 'strategic' and 'tactical' positions, as this severs the feedback loops necessary for innovation.

  3 more supporting quotes are in the member records.

  Source Two in a Box PM, 2022  (opens in a new tab)