Embedding a product-led culture at BPP

I’m Simon, I joined BPP recently as Principal Product Manager. Even in the short time I’ve been here I’ve already seen tremendous progress in the evolution from our more traditional ways of working towards a forward-looking, agile, digital organisation, a change which I’m proud to have been a part of. We’re now well on our way on this journey, and implementing a product-led culture has been crucial to enabling this to happen.

Understand the “why” before you get to the “how”

It wasn’t all that long ago that the business simply raised requirements and tech delivered against them. As with any company that grows exponentially — not just in size but in breadth and scope — processes grew organically as needed to support this growth, as did the technology solutions they relied on. As a result, consistency sometimes had to make way for speed.

Here’s where the need for product-led ways of working became so important. We needed to revisit from the ground up how we translate user needs and opportunities into what we design and build, and how we plan and prioritise the various streams of work within a complex ecosystem, in order to deliver in a lean, iterative fashion, maximising value and minimising waste.

Trust needs to be earned

As with any such fundamental change in an organisation’s mindset though, trust needs to be earned rather than assumed. From day one our product managers have worked continuously to map out key business stakeholders and build relationships with them. We’ve sought to understand why we do what we do, to challenge the status quo and identify potential areas for improvement or efficiencies.

We dig deep to uncover the true value that any requirement seeks to achieve, and so are able to get creative when coming up with potential solutions to meet, or in several cases exceed, those original ideas. We extensively research our users on an ongoing basis, both quantitatively and qualitatively, at all stages of the product lifecycle. This lets us keep all product decision-making as data-driven as possible, from discovery through to launch and optimisation.

Prioritisation is key

Right now at BPP we find ourselves at an incredibly exciting juncture. Whether we’re looking at creating more delightful experiences for our learners and clients, or keeping ourselves as operationally efficient as possible, there are so many opportunities to take BPP from strength to strength that one of our main challenges is what to tackle in which order — a great problem to have!

Rigorous product prioritisation, based on a deep understanding of our users, customers and operational needs, is therefore key. It allows us to roadmap very effectively across a complex set of domains, and this is no static exercise either — we regularly revisit those roadmaps to ensure that they are still current and if we need to reprioritise anything, we do so.

Get the team structure right

This kind of flexibility can only be achieved with the right product-led team structure and processes. We’ve moved to self-contained, cross-functional teams, each centred on a specific domain. Each of these is truly collaborative, with product, design and engineering all actively involved in the process from the get-go.

This model allows us to deliver quality product iteratively and flexibly, with fast time to value. It also gets the best out of every one of our highly talented team members by actively focusing everyone on building solutions that actually improve outcomes, rather than simply moving story points across a board.

Define success

Product managers are of course ultimately responsible for defining and agreeing with the business what success looks like, how it will be measured, and ensuring it gets delivered against, but every team as a whole is empowered to get innovative, get involved and take ownership of what needs to be built.

It’s important to note here that we take great care to make sure that autonomy within these teams doesn’t result in siloed user experiences or disjointed roadmaps. We leverage a top class design system for a cohesive look and feel and continually share best practices with each other across all disciplines, supported by closely coordinated delivery planning and execution across domains.

My top 5 insights

The top takeaways from my time here so far are:

• Always seek to understand the value that lies behind what the business is asking for; that way you can get creative with the most effective range of possible solutions.
• Digital transformation relies on a change in mindset, which can only ever come about based on trust. This needs to be earned by demonstrating value and delivering results.
• Don’t try to boil the ocean. Prioritise rigorously and focus on the right thing at the right time, based on value vs. effort.
• Self-contained, empowered teams, coordinated effectively across the portfolio, are the building blocks for the flexibility needed that can respond to ever-changing needs.
• You can’t achieve success unless everyone’s aligned on what it looks like and how it will be measured, so get this established from the outset.

Although we’ve achieved a tremendous amount of progress already, we really are very much at the beginning of this journey. For my part, I can’t wait to see how I, together with the rest of BPP product management, can continue to support BPP’s digital transformation.