Biotech Lessons on Running Companies Like Products
from agile theater to product breakthroughs what biotech can teach us about running companies like productsWhat biotech R&D teams get right about empiricism that software teams lose sight of, and what the cross-pollination looks like in practice.
Click image to open full size Biotech can teach software teams something about empiricism
When I first started working with Dyno Therapeutics, a Boston-based biotech tackling the gene therapy delivery problem, it did not look that different from many scaleups I have seen. Brilliant scientists, tons of funding, cutting-edge ideas. But also the antipatterns that creep in with scale: silos, dependencies, and a growing sense of process theater.
The turning point came when leaders at Dyno stopped trying to “install Agile” and instead focused on regaining and improving Dyno’s agility and traction. A key unlock was a workshop where we explored the question “What if we organized Dyno itself like a product?”
That is the story you will hear on the latest Scrum.org Community Podcast with Tyson Bertmaring, COO and Head of Stewardship, and Adrian Veres, CSO. They share how Dyno moved from handoffs and functional silos to empowered, cross-functional teams aligned to clear product goals.
What stood out for me listening back:
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They didn’t copy/paste Scrum ceremonies. They focused on clarity of goals and continuous inspection/adaptation.
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They dared to rip off the band-aid: building scientific teams that combined lab associates, data scientists, and ML engineers around a single outcome.
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They treated the company itself like a product, evolving its operating model with the same empiricism they applied to their science.
That is the Agile Product Operating Model in action. Not Agile Theater. Not installing a framework. Developing your company the same way you develop products: set outcomes, test approaches, learn, and adapt.
I was fortunate to play a small role early in this journey, nudging the conversation away from agile mechanics towards agility and product principles. The results speak for themselves: faster innovation loops, aligned incentives, and a structure that scales with complexity instead of collapsing under it. (Tyson dives deeper into this earlier part of the journey on a past episode)
If you are wrestling with silos, coordination overhead, or transformation fatigue, listen to the episode and ask: are we running our organization like a theater production or like a product?
Yuval Yeret helps product and tech leaders move from agile theater to evidence-informed delivery. Work with Yuval →
