Walk into your
next review with
receipts

Marty Cagan — Inspired

"Stop being a feature factory. The PM's job is to bring evidence — risk, value, and feasibility — to the trade-off, not to take stenography from sales."

Use this when: Leadership respects discovery rigor. Cagan gives you the language to push back ("we haven't validated the risk yet") without sounding obstructionist.

John Cutler — Workshop on Prioritization

"Prioritization isn't a ranking problem — it's a constraint-naming problem. Make the constraint visible (capacity, time, risk) and let the room rank against it."

Use this when: The org is feature-factory-leaning. Cutler reframes the conversation away from "which features?" to "what's the real constraint?" — and lets the room arrive at the cut.

April Dunford — Obviously Awesome

"Start with competitive alternatives. What would your customer use if you didn't exist? That tells you your unique attributes — not the other way around."

Use this when: You need a structured, defensible positioning document. Dunford's 5-step framework is the most universally-respected starting point in B2B SaaS.

Andy Raskin — Strategic Narrative

"Position around the strategic narrative. Customers don't buy products — they buy a worldview that makes the product inevitable."

Use this when: You're selling to executives, not end-users. Raskin's narrative framework wins enterprise deals where Dunford's attribute-based positioning feels too tactical.

Teresa Torres — Continuous Discovery

"Opportunity Solution Trees make the unknowns visible. Once leadership sees the gaps in evidence, they stop asking you to commit prematurely — they ask you to close the gaps."

Use this when: You can carve out 1-2 weeks for discovery. Torres' OST is a respected, citable artifact you can put on a slide.

Bob Moesta — JTBD Origin

"Run 5 switch interviews before you commit. Until you've heard the same struggling moment three times, you don't have a job-to-be-done — you have a hypothesis."

Use this when: The product is a major bet and leadership is willing to invest in JTBD interviews. Moesta's method finds the strongest "build" rationale.