Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model

4.5 | 272 ratings

Price: 15.04

Last update: 01-21-2025

About this item

Help transform your business and innovate like the world's top tech companies!

Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model was written to bridge the gap between where most companies are right now and where they need to be. The leaders of these companies know they must transform to compete in an era of rapidly changing enabling technology, but most of them have never operated this way before. Transformed has three big goals:

- First, the book will educate you with a deep understanding of the product operating model, and what it means to work that way.

- Second, the book will convince you with detailed case studies of successful transformations, that while difficult, it is absolutely possible for you to transform your company to the product operating model.

- Third, the book will inspire you with truly impressive case studies of product innovation, showing what you too will be capable of doing once you successfully transform.

Written by bestselling author Marty Cagan and his partners at the Silicon Valley Product Group, Transformed is filled with real-world examples and proven, practical advice from their decades of experience helping companies move to the product operating model.

Some guy

This book will make you feel better.

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2024

Is your company is struggling to evolve from a traditional CIO-led IT service organization into a modern product company?

Read this book. You will feel better. Your organization isn't alone. It will help you articulate your challenges clearly and cohesively across your company. This isn't a blueprint for fixing your org, but it gives you some foundational principles from which to start.

John A. Roby

No playbook here! Just hard truths, suggested tactics and company success stories

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2024

I've just finished this book and I guess you can call me a convert. As I was reading it, I kept thinking, 'Get out of my head, Marty Cagan.'

I found it particularly refreshing that this book stresses that the model is conceptual and that there is no one right way to do it. In a world of credentials, consulting, play books and magic bullets promising 'you too can be agile if you follow this particular recipe' this book offers no recipe. Just hard truths, suggested tactics and great examples of companies who have converted to the product operating model and done so successfully.

Three seemingly simple things on which to focus that the book then spends several chapters delving into at depth from all angles to help illustrate transformation:

--Changing how you build
--Changing how you solve problems
--Changing how you decide which problems to solve

Cagan goes through everything from partnering with the various organizations within your business to transformation tactics, assessment and (key for large organizations), overcoming objections from various stakeholders. This is a great book and great starter for all things product operational model. And the best part? ALWAYS with the customer in mind.

Of particular interest to me was Cagan's discussion of 'High Integrity Commitments'-basically mandatory dates by which things must be delivered. Feature factory companies are used to doing this with project plans and stakeholders making commitments that are then handed to feature teams. Not so in this model. Here, we have the team as an active participant in the date setting process, with the attendant opportunity cost of allowing them the runway to commit. And they don't commit if they don't have this runway. This will be a major adjustment for most organizations, but a welcome one for high performing teams who are hungry to solve real customer problems.

I was going to stop here, but next up will be 'Empowered' to take the deep dive into culture and how to help coach and drive the transformation.

K. Zamanian

Practical insights that make product leaders more successful

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2024

Marty and his SVPG team have been inspiring and guiding product manager worldwide for many years. As software companies face continued pressure to deliver innovative, competitive solutions with more automation through AI, it's crucial to transform to a product model that empowers teams to be solution-centric instead pleasing various stakeholders with features and roadmap items. This book provides a comprehensive and easy-to-follow set of guidelines to gradually and effectively adopt the product model.

Raz

Marty Speaks plain and unvarnished truth.

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2024

When I started out in product almost twenty years ago, I didn't even know what that meant let alone how to be successful. I worked in product for eight years before I had my first colleague with any product experience. The beautiful aspect of that was that I brought no dogma with me. I read so many books, interrogated anyone with experience that I found, but mostly felt unsatisfied until I eventually came across SVPG and Marty.

For anyone not experienced with the product operating model who wonders whether it lives up to all the hype... the answer is an unequivocal yes.

The thing I found more impressive than anything else with this book is that Marty so directly and unapologetically points out that at most companies, the emperor is wearing no clothes. These other highly dogmatic frameworks don't really work. Those looking for the "one simple trick" that is highly repeatable and ubiquitously effective, might as well be looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. If you focus on and measure outputs, not outcomes, you will optimize for that right until leadership realizes the ship has run aground, or more commonly, until some other company disrupts yours into irrelevance.

On the flip side, if you can get your team/company/coworkers to fully embrace and engage with this model, not only will you start to see accelerated success, but working in that type of environment is exciting, energizing, and while not usually associated with work, incredibly fun.

A friend of mine points out that most business books contain only enough principles to fill a pamphlet, but then are filled with hundreds of pages of case studies because the concepts are too abstract for most people to ingest them. To an extent, Transformed is the same, but the style and application of those case studies here are very well done, and designed to help convince both the reader and others as well.

My experience has been that the most difficult part of the product operating model is convincing enough of the right people to really give it a serious try. I'm very eager to use this as inspiration and another tool to continue to evangelize.

Thank you Marty, SVPG, and those who have collaborated with you, for your passion and your effort.

Middle-Aged Cyclist

Better books out there

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2024

There seems to be a cult following for Marty’s books but not sure why. Most of the ideas are cobbled together from other books that are much better written.

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