Agility in Product
Navigating the shift to product-based operating models in digital transformations
Why is the shift to product a challenge for organisations in digital transformations?
Even with a successful and established product or service, it is important to continue exploring new opportunities to remain competitive and retain customers with ever-evolving needs. As barriers to entry reduce, traditional project-based organisations struggle to pivot to innovate at the speed of the market to retain momentum of growth. As a result, organisations look to invest in enabling agility to benefit from iterating products at pace, doing so through a shift from project to a product operating model. In customer-focused, product-driven organisations, the role of Product Management comes to the forefront, but project-based organisations struggle to help their people transition to upskill and adapt during digital transformations. We look at the reoccurring challenges faced during transformations and explore means of overcoming them…
Common Pitfalls to avoid
Shoehorning people to roles
Organisations tend to re-skill staff into Product roles, with expectations that they will rapidly develop new soft skills and behavioural traits to become customer centric. Where the discipline of Product Management is new to the organisation, a cultural adjustment and new way of working will need to be embraced across the enterprise. Organisations will need to carefully select the right people for Product Management roles, to avoid focussing on delivering outputs as previous, rather than delivering to outcomes. If an organisation is reskilling internally, then re-utilising talent from Business Analyst or Business Change roles are more of a natural fit for the PO role than Delivery lead or Project Manager. An organisation can leverage consultancies to provide training, learning and development as a catalyst to upskill and embed change.
The expectations placed on product managers by organisations that view the shift from project to product as all or nothing are often unreasonable and unachievable.
Retrofitting to fit current needs
Organisations often misrepresent the responsibilities of product roles during the transition period of a transformation, instead retaining traditional waterfall norms. For those new to agility, the fusion of methodologies may create misinformation as training and coaching is retrofitted to suit current needs, rather than best practice defined by industry standards. Similarly, organisations appoint proxy Product roles that are directed by senior stakeholders to deliverindividual or departmental goals. This approach leads to organisations prioritising work to solve business needs masquerading as meeting the needs of the Customer.
Disempowered product roles
As the move to Product occurs, it can cause tensions between ‘the business’ and product roles, the need to remain in control kicks in. Business stakeholders tend to look to retain the budget and therefore becomes the de-facto decision maker. In a project-based world, budget owners decided what ‘value’ is. In the shift to product, this responsibility needs to transition to the product role. If not, this results in disempowered Product roles, that are unable to say “no” and constantly seek permission from stakeholders to execute. Sponsorship from leadership to support overcoming these challenges and empower Product Management is essential for Product roles to autonomously make swift decisions and prioritise features.
31% of Product Managers reported executive leadership taking control of their product strategy
Failing to provide clarity
Without investing in a robust product capability structure that provides a viable clear career path and criteria for excellence, the Product role is reduced to a side of desk responsibility which undermines the effectiveness of the transformation. A lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities, common organisational standards and means to progress in the capability builds frustration and disengagement. Existing role bands and hierarchies are often relabelled to create the product capability structure, without delineated responsibilities drawn. This is compounded by a failure to invest in capability development efforts, focusing instead on short-lived training and overlaying new roles on top of current responsibilities. Organisations struggle to unlock the value of a product model, using the current skillsets in the existing workforce.
75%of product managers surveyed say their organisations’ product management function is sub-par or non-existent
Transforming tech teams only
Organisations do not always consider the wider enterprise in transformations, leaving middle management to change the ways of working of the business hindering the ability to deliver maximum value to customers. Without a considered change strategy for departments such as Legal, HR, Risk, and Finance existing governance structures persist, often becoming further entrenched due to an uncertainty of impact created by the new ways of working. For Product Management, this creates an existential conflict as they seek to build strong relationships with internal stakeholders in these departments, which remain focussed on projects being funded and delivering to the original scope. By not developing an enterprise-wide transformation strategy, The organisation is creating a tussle between business and technology, empowering stakeholders to enforce waterfall style structures over frequent, and continual value delivery.
Changing approaches
Inconsistent approaches, and moving organisational structures erode trust and results in pushback on the transformation. Failure to provide a stable set of long-term strategic priorities, as well as frequent, late changing, and tactical priority shifts at leadership level puts Product Management in a reactive position, neutralising their ability to maximise value creation. In a heavily regulated industry, sensitive issues such as managing risk and financial reporting will need clarity on how teams engage and evidence compliance. Without guidance on the approach to adhere to these guardrails the Product roles may be dominated by meeting internal demands which introduces more overhead and administration into the product development cycle directly conflicting with the primary outcomes and focus of a digital transformation.
As custodians of value, Product Management needs a stable and consistent north star to deliver the most value to the customer.
On the ground insights
Based on our experience, we have found that organisations are more effective in pivoting from project to product, when applying these principles:
Start small, then scale
Top-down, big-bang transformations are vastly more prone to failure than ones that evolve through a series of small-scale ‘proofs of concept’ (Rigby, Sutherland, and Noble, 2017). By taking an iterative, incremental, and evidence-based approach to transformation, organisations can overcome challenges before they are compounded by the complexities of scaling too quickly. This means focusing support on a smaller cohort through the transition first, to create a group of champion changemakers as a catalyst to accelerate change for the wider transformation.
Focus on outcomes
Organisations should look to frame their strategy in outcomes, empowering Product roles to set their own objectives that align to the organisation’s wider strategy. We recommend using Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) at every level so Product teams can pivot to focus on outcomes over outputs. This enables Product Management to explore solutions through user research, experimentation and investigation and then make objective decisions to prioritise building things that are going to drive the right outcomes for customers.
Engage change experts to advise
The enterprise-wide transition from traditional ways of working to agile delivery in digital transformations requires a conscious shift in behaviours, mindset, and culture (Patel, Aggramen & Dittman, 2023). Leverage agility and product coaches to be the Transformation change leads and create a tailored approach for an organisation to adapt and embrace agility. This personalised approach targets the gaps through formal training, bespoke coaching, and strategic interventions across the wider enterprise which is essential for growth and success.
Remove traditional practices
Replacing traditional meetings, structures and practices where decisions are often made by a committee is essential. A holistic review of governance, finance and reporting structures by senior management is required to enable an effective shift. Repositioning existing meetings to supplement agile events, may limit pushback by teams. Doing so in proof-of-concept areas before establishing agile practices at scale will enable an organisation to effectively gauge the success and challenges of the transition without overloading people with a duplicate governance model.
Measure the impact
It is key to evidence the benefit of the transformation through measuring what matters, across a range of dimensions to gauge how the transition is going and where the organisation needs to turn and focus its attention. An enterprise dashboard can provide the visibility to enable an organisation to instantly identify how their Team, Domain or Portfolio are trending based on balanced outcomes. It brings hidden data from silos across organisations into one transparent location. By providing actionable insights of how teams, portfolios and organisations are trending in real-time, we empower them to drive positive outcomes and continuously improve.
Adopt agility through product
In this permacrisis macroenvironment It has become paramount for organisation’s survival to adopt an agile approach. Product roles are the face of digital transformations, yet the impact of Product Management is underestimated at the beginning of an organisation’s digital transformation journey. Traditional organisations need to provide product roles with extra support, empowerment, and sponsorship from senior leadership to avoid falling into the trap of common anti-patterns. To effectively make the shift to a Product approach, the question ‘what’s in it for the customer’ needs to be central to every decision, so that it permeates throughout the organisation and its culture. Customers are capricious by nature, only willing to stick around if the product being offered is bringing delight, evidenced by the misfortunes of Blackberry, Blockbuster, and Nokia. You Product Teams are the advocate for that delight, without them how confident can you be that your organisation will thrive in the long-term and not find itself fighting for survival?
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