This article is inspired by recent conversations I had with Product Leaders about product operating models, how to bring them to life using Product Playbooks, and how to approach developing these Product Playbooks. Vered. A Product playbook is a repository of best practices, processes, and tools that streamline product management. It ensures that products meet …
I see some practitioners and leaders using these terms interchangeably. I thought I’d take the time to clarify the overlaps and differences, first of all for myself. Product-Led Organization—As opposed to Sales/Engineering/Marketing/Professional Services-led organizations, a Product-Led organization is structured to deliver value through the product. These organizations often have product-oriented leaders at the helm. Some …
I recently joined Adam Mattis on the “Business Agility Now” podcast for a conversation about scaling agile and product operating models. It’s always a pleasure to chat with Adam about the realities of applying agility at scale and some of the trends I’m seeing in the field. We covered various topics, drawing from our experiences …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Most organizations wait way too long to adopt some portfolio-level agility practices. They’ve been told, “You can’t scale what’s broken,” so they wait until they nail agile at the team and product group level. What if fixing what’s broken REQUIRES focusing on the upstream that’s shaping the work and context of these teams? Back in …
Is your Portfolio Kanban Board Busy? Do you feel like almost any outcome of any significance needs to be managed at the Portfolio level because it involves several of your product/development groups? One solution would be to invest in better portfolio management, coordination mechanisms, etc. A better solution would be to descale. To find ways …