A Controversial Book Review: Marty Cagan's Transformed
I finished Transformed and The Mom Test in the same week. One made the top shelf. The other is 340 pages where only 40% is new — here's the scorecard against its own three big goals.
Alright, it's time for a controversial book review! Trigger warning for all you Marty Cagan fanboys out there. Last week was a big one—I finished both "Transformed" and "The Mom Test" in the same week. Woohoo! While "The Mom Test" was a delightful surprise, "Transformed," a book all about “Moving to the Product Operating Model,” left me a bit underwhelmed.
For context, I had already read his book "Inspired," which I loved and proudly display on my top shelf. So, let's dive into the pros and cons of "Transformed."
(-1) The book is long—340 pages of densely packed information. 📚 But here’s the kicker: only about 40% of it is new content from "Inspired." So, I spent a lot of time hoping for more depth, but alas, it never came.
(-1) Speaking of depth, the book is extremely high-level. 📉 Most topics get less than 5 pages of a high-level overview. As a Product Manager, this meant I spent most of the book craving more detailed insights but never got them.
(+1) However, I did love the 40% that was new. ✨ If nothing else, it provided introductions to topics I can further research on my own.
(+2) For structure, the book is beautifully organized. 📚 I love referencing my books when tackling issues I know I've read about, and "Transformed" makes it a breeze to find information on any topic it covers.
In the end, the biggest problem was probably that I wasn’t the target audience (I should have known, it literally says that in Chapter One 🤦). But let’s see if the book achieved its “three BIG GOALS”:
-Educate you on exactly what the product operating model is and what it means to work this way. 5/10 (It's just so high-level, and only a starting point)
-Convince you that such transformations are absolutely possible for you to transform your company to the product model. ?/10 (I was already convinced.)
-Inspire you about what you too will be capable of once you successfully transform your organization. 9/10 (I like stories, and there were a lot of them!)
So, if you're a product manager trying to convince your executives to give the Product Operating Model a try, give it to them. But for someone actually doing this day-to-day, I'd probably just skim it for the sections I wanted, like the “Overcoming Objections by Job Role” part of the book i will definitely reference next time I am having stakeholder issues.