Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love

It is a pity that there are only 5 stars to award the maximum appreciation for this book. There are a number of achievements that deserve, alone, five stars.First, Marty Cagan clearly states what qualities a Product Manager must have. Not everyone is talented to be a Product Manager. The author lists unmeasurable traits, such as product passion, customer empathy, innate intelligence (there is no substitute for it, we learn), ethics, integrity and confidence. The latter is very important as the entire teams in engineering and marketing must be kept inspired. This leads to the corollary that simply training a person to be a Product Manager is not enough. One must know when an unsuitable person must look for other positions. This is something uncommon, to consider what many view a process driven function to a talent.Second, the book asks where to place the Product Manageent function. In Engineering? In Marketing? There is a distinction between a Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager. As veteran product manager myself, I know the challenges to be part of engineering. Engineers are sometimes suspicious of marketing and their product manager becomes the "piñata" everyone beats in frustration. As part of Marketing, there is tendency to follow release processes and create demands engineering can not deliver in a logical way. Marty advocates the creation of a Product Council with equal rights as engineering and marketingMarty says a successful product manager sees himself as the CEO of the product. This is absolutely true, but unfortunately the Directors of Engineering and those of Marketing, also see themselves as CEOs. As long as an independent product council does not exist, the product manager must be a CEO with zero authority. S/he must be a diplomat and shrewd negotiator before he can be a CEO. Yet the true blue blood product manager is the one whose skills are required for start up.As startup is usually a one product or service company. Chapter 28 is dedicated to product management in a startup company. The challenge is a new start up is started with an idea that comes from engineering. However we must have the right product for the right audience, before "before burning through $500,000 or more in seed funding".Every aspect of the product management function is presented.I am an alumni of UC Berkeley Haas School Product Management executive program, one of few, if not the only program dedicated to Product Management. Berkeley program talks of portfolio management. What products to release, how many are completely new and how many are new releases of older or even very old products?It all depends on the risk tolerance. A products portfolio must include new high risk, lottery-like winning products. This is what made Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley. After reading Marty Cagan, every professional team all over the world can produce "inspired" products. Silicon Valley and it's personalities now share all they know. But what is a low probability to create outside Silicon Valley is another Google. The Google Sequoia Capital VC's made more money in Google than all the rest of the portfolio combined over the last 20 years.Another topic that I would have liked to see expanded in a next edition is pricing. How do we price the products in such a way that we do not leave money on the table? But this is another subject. Marty's book is both educational and thought provoking. The book self published by Silicon Valley Product Group, the company of Marty Cagan, went beyond the goal of being a reference for it's prospective v customers. It is THE BOOK for of product management, a must-read for anyone.The idea of the product manager as a creator with talent and passion I advocated for years in my blog, "The memories of a Program Manager". It is re-assuring to see the same sentiments shared in the more comprehensive, practical and sensitive book of Marty Cagan..

I have always been interested in how great software products are built. In the early 90's, I took several "software engineering best practices" courses at Boston University as part of my doctoral studies and since then I have read many books and articles and have lead many software product development and product management teams. Now I even teach a course at Stanford on product management and the software product lifecycle.Marty's Cagan's book is by far the best book I have ever read on software product management, or really on how to build great products.His general theme of discovering products that are "valuable, usable, and feasible" is brilliant. He discusses the role of the product management including contrasting it to product marketing, project management, design, and engineering. He lays out a guideline for product management processes including how to succeed with agile methods, waterfall processes, in a start-up, and in large companies. It is hard to believe he covers so many useful topics (cutting features vs. slipping dates, market research, innovating in large companies) and classic problems (confusing product management with product marketing) in this relatively short, very straightforward, and very readable book.If you are a product manager or just want to learn how to build great software products, but this book! Then buy one for everyone on your team, for everyone around you, and especially for your CEO. (Oh, you are the CEO? then what are you waiting for?)

I am currently an MBA student doing an internship in Product Management at eBay (note that everything here is my own opinion and not the company's), and I wanted to pick up a guide to being a PM to get an additional perspective. This book came highly recommend by Amazon reviewers, so I thought I would give it a try.I wrote my full review in a post here: [...]In summary, Cagan's book serves as a great guide to someone new to the practice of Product Management as it clearly outlines the roles and responsibilities of the PM and everyone else she must work with to get the right product to the customer. In my own six weeks of experience at eBay, I have found that Cagan very accurately describes this company's version of the role. For the seasoned PM, the book offers several fresh ideas for how to better do his job, though he must think hard on which ideas would work well for his own situation.

The book is an easy read. Lots of examples and references especially for the web development industry. If made such an impact on me (although not all were revolutionary ideas, but those that weren't were great reminders for staying on track).Here comes the downside... after reading and loving this book, I streamlined my thinking process with the updated information and began to implement and ease into the "better" direction. However, neither my boss nor my subordinates were aligned with the new initiatives I was trying to carry forward. I had numerous grinding headaches/debates trying to manage my boss to allow me to pursue things in the "better" direction. I actually saw it coming. Before I began to implement anything, I purchased a copy for my boss and my dept. manager. And yet, it wasn't enough (either they didn't read it yet or are not as inspired as I was).Therefore, believers please beware to pace and manage your "implementation" and "change" process as I had to learn the hard way. Don't let it end up your working relationship. If I could do it over again, I wouldn't just hand them the book without an immense amount of marketing upfront. That's how good the book is.The book is now my bible!

Fantastic book for product managers and teams. Concise, informative and innovative

Great read, like the way the book flows. Quite interesting !!However, if you have read his blogs, you can avoid this.

Working in the product industry for the last 10 years, I had higher expectations from the book. The book lacks practical examples and comes across as preachy without substance. Too concise for beginners in product management and too cliched for people already there.

Very good and inspiring. Easy to read, easy to follow and comprehend. I recommend this book for every PM, mainly from IT.