This is a summary review of Inspired containing key details about the book.

What is Inspired About?

Inspired by Marty Cagan offers practical advice for creating successful and innovative digital products. (Full Summary…)

Inspired Summary Review

Marty Cagan’s “Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love” stands as a classic in the realm of product management, offering a comprehensive guide on creating successful tech products. Drawing on his extensive experience, Cagan provides insights, strategies, and practical advice that prove invaluable for individuals across the spectrum of product development.

The book begins by delving into the distinctive approaches of highly successful tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Tesla. Rather than adhering to conventional methods, these industry giants employ unconventional strategies, and “Inspired” aims to unravel the secrets behind their achievements. Cagan presents a master class on structuring and staffing a productive product organization and emphasizes the significance of discovering and delivering products that resonate with customers while aligning with business objectives.

Covering key aspects such as assembling the right team, identifying the right product, implementing an effective yet lightweight process, and fostering a strong product culture, the book serves as a practical manual for enhancing product efforts. Whether addressing early-stage startups aiming for product/market fit, growth-stage companies looking to scale their product organization, or well-established entities aiming for consistent innovation, “Inspired” offers insights applicable to a diverse range of scenarios.

Cagan’s narrative is enriched by personal stories and profiles of successful product managers and technology-powered companies, including Adobe, Apple, BBC, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix. The second edition, thoroughly updated from the first edition published a decade ago, remains a go-to resource for technology product managers worldwide.

The reader is guided through the intricacies of product management, from distinguishing it from other essential roles to confronting inconvenient truths about product efforts. The book emphasizes Lean and Agile principles, advocates for collaborative and sequential product development, and underscores the importance of solving problems over implementing features.

Cagan provides a nuanced understanding of team dynamics, the role of product managers, and the necessity of bringing deep knowledge of customers, data, business stakeholders, and the market. Practical advice on building strong product teams, crafting product visions, effective stakeholder management, and the pitfalls of typical product roadmaps are covered in detail.

One standout concept is the notion of creating the smallest possible product that meets specific customer needs, emphasizing the importance of a team of missionaries rather than mercenaries. Cagan suggests a proactive approach to risks, customer validation, and iterative development, all while advocating for a product vision that falls in love with the problem rather than the solution.

The book’s later chapters delve into aspects like analytics, qualitative and quantitative testing, the role of a product manager as the CEO of Product, and the establishment of a strong product culture encompassing innovation and execution.

While the book has received acclaim, including a substantial number of positive reviews and ratings, its strengths lie in the practical wisdom it imparts rather than relying on numerical metrics. Cagan’s emphasis on actionable insights and real-world examples positions “Inspired” as an enduring guide for individuals involved in product management, design, and engineering, fostering a deep understanding of the principles that contribute to successful product development.

Who is the author of Inspired?

Marty Cagan is a Silicon Valley-based product executive with more than 20 years of experience with industry leaders including eBay, AOL, Netscape Communications and Hewlett-Packard. Marty is the author of the book “Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love” which presents techniques for creating winning products.

How long is Inspired?

• Print length: 349 pages

What genre is Inspired?

Business, Nonfiction, Design

What are good quotes from Inspired?

“Along the vertical dimension, we have a progressive level of detail. As we flesh out each major activity into sets of user tasks, we add stories for each of those tasks. The critical tasks are higher vertically than the optional tasks.”

“Will the product actually work? Is the product a whole product? How will customers actually think about and buy the product? Is it consistent with how we plan to sell it? Are the product’s strengths consistent with what’s important to our customers? Are we positioning these strengths as aggressively as possible? Is the product worth money? How much money? Why? Can customers get it cheaper elsewhere? Do I understand what the rest of the product team thinks is good about the product? Is it consistent with my own view?”

“People are always searching for a silver bullet to create products, and there is always a willing industry—ready and waiting to serve with books, coaching, training, and consulting. But there is no silver bullet, and inevitably people figure this out.”

“The purpose of product discovery is to quickly separate the good ideas from the bad. The output of product discovery is a validated product backlog. Specifically, this means getting answers to four critical questions: Will the user buy this (or choose to use it)? Can the user figure out how to use this? Can our engineers build this? Can our stakeholders support this?”

“As product people, we’re essentially in the idea business. It’s our job to come up with great ideas and then make them a reality.”

“The Group Product Manager Role There’s a role in larger product organizations that I find especially effective. The role is titled group product manager, usually referred to as GPM. The GPM is a hybrid role. Part individual contributor and part first‐level people manager. The idea is that the GPM is already a proven product manager (usually coming from a senior product manager title), and now the person is ready for more responsibility. There are generally two career paths for product managers. One is to stay as an individual contributor, which, if you’re strong enough, can go all the way up to a principal product manager—a person who’s an individual contributor but a rock‐star performer and willing and able to tackle the toughest product work. This is a very highly regarded role and generally compensated like a director or even VP. The other path is to move into functional management of the product managers (the most common title is director”

“The Group Product Manager Role There’s a role in larger product organizations that I find especially effective. The role is titled group product manager, usually referred to as GPM. The GPM is a hybrid role. Part individual contributor and part first‐level people manager. The idea is that the GPM is already a proven product manager (usually coming from a senior product manager title), and now the person is ready for more responsibility. There are generally two career paths for product managers. One is to stay as an individual contributor, which, if you’re strong enough, can go all the way up to a principal product manager—a person who’s an individual contributor but a rock‐star performer and willing and able to tackle the toughest product work. This is a very highly regarded role and generally compensated like a director or even VP. The other path is to move into functional management of the product managers (the most common title is director of product management) where some number of product managers (usually somewhere between 3 and 10) report directly to you. The director of product management is really responsible for two things. The first is ensuring his or her product managers are all strong and capable. The second is product vision and strategy and connecting the dots between the product work of the many teams. This is also referred to as holistic view of product. But lots of strong senior product managers are not sure about their preferred career path at this stage, and the GPM role is a great way to get a taste of both worlds. The GPM is the actual product manager for one product team, but in addition, she is responsible for the development and coaching of a small number of additional product managers (typically, one to three others). While the director of product management may have product managers who work across many different areas, the GPM model is designed to facilitate tightly coupled product teams.”

“Risks are tackled up front, rather than at the end.”

“Products are defined and designed collaboratively, rather than sequentially.”

“A’s hiring A’s, and B’s hiring C’s.”

“Risks are tackled up front, rather than at the end. In modern teams, we tackle these risks prior to deciding to build anything. These risks include value risk (whether customers will buy it), usability risk (whether users can figure out how to use it), feasibility risk (whether our engineers can build what we need with the time, skills, and technology we have), and business viability risk (whether this solution also works for the various aspects of our business—sales, marketing, finance, legal, etc.). Products are defined and designed collaboratively, rather than sequentially. They have finally moved beyond the old model in which a product manager defines requirements, a designer designs a solution that delivers on those requirements, and then engineering implements those requirements, with each person living with the constraints and decisions of the ones that preceded. In strong teams, product, design, and engineering work side by side, in a give‐and‐take way, to come up with technology‐powered solutions that our customers love and that work for our business.”

“They have finally moved beyond the old model in which a product manager defines requirements, a designer designs a solution that delivers on those requirements, and then engineering implements those requirements, with each person living with the constraints and decisions of the ones that preceded. In strong teams, product, design, and engineering work side by side, in a give‐and‐take way, to come up with technology‐powered solutions that our customers love and that work for our business.”