The Big Leaps

My usual list-compulsion. This time…the big leaps I observe teams taking in their product development related continuous improvement journey

• Fully cross-functional teams (w/dedicated team members including UX and testers)
• Teams have direct access to customers/users
• Team operates as a team (not a work-group, many teams of one)
• Opportunity focused roadmap (vs. solution focused)
• Teams have direct access to insights/data
• Team able to link day-to-day work to core company bets (short/mid/long term)
• Design involved in opportunity and solution exploration/research
• Developers involved in opportunity and solution exploration/research
• “Non customer-facing” work viewed as equal to customer-facing work
• Products, capabilities, missions, and services over projects
• Embrace DevOps and related practices (e.g. CI/CD, trunk-based dev, etc.)
• Quality/craft is valued. Minimal amount of reactive/failure-mode work
• Value stream orientation vs. structuring around components, technology
• Team funded based on outcomes/capabilities vs. project completio
• Managers shift perspective to servant leadership — facilitators, coaches, catalysts
• Shift to smaller batches and more frequent integration/deployment
• Ability to run multiple, concurrent, context-dependent operating models across org
• Thoughtful approach to increasing organizational resiliency/adaptability/anti-fragility
• Shift from delivery stance, to learning/innovation/differentiation stance
• Balanced portfolio of bets. Risk and uncertainty exploited (not avoided)