Founders know that scaling their company to Unicorn status requires extending beyond a singular focus. Launching a product extension. Complementing your established Go-to-market motion. Entering new markets (Different ICP, Geography, etc. ) Often, companies approach these extensions using the same processes they use for their established Products/Markets. They approach a new product opportunity with unwarranted …
Reader Kevin had this question about Cross-Product Initiative Ownership:“How should we choose an Initiative (or Epic) Owner when multiple parts of the organization will be responsible for delivery?” That is a good question that often comes up in the trenches when I’m helping organizations apply product-oriented agile thinking to cross-organization initiatives. Here’s how I think about …
Does it ever feel like OKRs are too much overhead? Does it make sense that OKRs will only work when “We we will have more people to manage them”? Let’s be honest – OKRs can sometimes feel a bit heavy: If you’re tempted to hire a PMO to manage your OKRs because they’ve become too …
A major focus for me these days is helping Leaders who set out to shift their organizations from a project to a product mindset figure out how to scale product orientation to a multi-product environment. They want to apply product thinking to their strategic initiatives that cut across products and beyond the product organization. This …
What do you do when a product team’s capabilities aren’t aligned with strategic priorities? This is a common challenge for product/portfolio leaders. On the one hand – a product-oriented operating model talks about empowered, stable product teams. On the other hand – we want to focus on maximizing outcomes. What if a product is good …
“We have to have this product capability – it’s a key element of this business initiative we already committed to.” The essence of the Product Operating Model is to empower product teams to achieve outcomes without prescribing to them what outputs to deliver. I often encounter organizations who adopt a Product Operating Model as an …
The idea of bringing dependent teams together to collaborate better and minimize cross-dependency overhead isn’t unique to SAFe. It’s just a fractal of the pattern of an agile cross-functional team, which Agile hasn’t invented either, just leveraged. Here’s how you might go about designing effective ARTs: There will still be dependencies. Sometimes, even a lot. …
For the fun of it – the next time a big consultancy gives a big presentation to your organization, pitching a POM – ask them how they recommend managing this transformation. And see if what they describe looks more like a Project or a Product. For example – Will they measure vanity metrics or product …
When implementing agile portfolio management, leaders’ first—and often most daunting—question is: “Where do we start?” I’ve taught my share of frameworks. In some cases, a comprehensive blueprint or roadmap makes sense. They feel safer to people from traditional project/program management – who ARE often the exact people leading the move towards agile ways of working, …
Many organizations tackling cross-product initiatives struggle with initiative ownership. At its heart, a cross-product initiative involves significant impact across multiple products/groups (sometimes called a portfolio) As organizations scale up, they get to the point where they need to tackle cross-product/cross-organization initiatives. These are often significant, complex endeavors aimed at solving an expensive problem or opening …