Foreword: Marty Cagan

As the years go by, the more I credit luck for my good fortune, and the less I credit any particular skills I might possess.

When I was a new tech lead on a product team, I was incredibly fortunate to have an engineering manager who had a track record of consistent innovation and was truly committed to helping me develop my skills.

When I wanted to learn product management, I was assigned an experienced product leader and serial entrepreneur who coached me through the many major new areas of learning, drilled into me the principles of strong product, and made sure I knew what I needed to do along the way, and where to get help when I ran into trouble.

When I wanted to learn much more about modern product design, I had direct access to one of the best design leaders in the world, working on the leading edge of design for Internet-based products.

And when I wanted to move into product leadership, I had several world-class leaders who were willing to put in the time to coach and develop my leadership and strategy skills.

I thought constant access to that type of coaching was normal, at least until I left the bubble I was in and entered the broader technology world.

Unfortunately, as I learned and you likely already know, most people are not as lucky as I was.

Many work in organizations where the leaders have not had a chance to see how good product teams work up close. And as such, they’re unable to effectively coach and develop their people.

I meet companies like this constantly. They want to improve. They know they need to improve. They usually understand the theory of how strong teams work. But they just don’t have the hands-on experience and knowledge to be able to provide the coaching their people need.

One way to address this is to bring in experienced product and technology leaders who can provide this coaching and development for their organizations. This can work very well, but many companies have found that these experienced leaders are in very high demand.

Which is why the most scalable solution I know of to this problem is to enlist the help of an experienced product coach.

This is how I first met Teresa many years ago. I saw how she had been helping product teams, and I started introducing her to many different product organizations, located all over the world. And I kept recommending her because the companies and teams she was helping were soon doing visibly better.

So when Teresa told me that she wanted to write a book sharing much of what she had learned and has been advocating at these companies, I was more than a little bit glad to hear that.

I meet so many product teams that genuinely want to do great work, but they’re just not sure what they need to do to get started solving real problems for their customers while achieving the necessary outcomes for their company.

While there is no single way for a product team to do good work, there are countless bad ways, and what so many teams need is to be coached in the right direction, much like I received when I was learning.

This book shares what Teresa has found to be most effective and will provide you with the structure you need to know what to do—and when—in order to discover good opportunities and effective solutions.

My hope is that, if you haven’t had the good fortune to be coached by a strong leader or product coach, this book can help fill that gap and set you on the path to success.

Marty Cagan

Silicon Valley Product Group

February 2021