Product Thinking, easier said than done

Recently I was asked by Michiel Faasse from Expandior to write an article about Product Management. I always have been intrigued by the fact that not everybody is immediatly seeing the connection between Agile working and product thinking, so I decided to write an article about this. You can find the full article here. Below a short version of the same article.

Let me start with the question, what is meant with 'product'.

“In the Agile context, a product is not just a physical item but is a deliverable that provides value to a customer or end user. It goes beyond a tangible good and can encompass software, services, or a combination of both.”

In Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, a product is managed throughout its lifecycle by a cross-functional team that collaborates in short, iterative cycles called sprints. The product can evolve based on continuous feedback, allowing for adaptability and responsiveness to changing requirements. The focus is on delivering a minimum viable product (MVP) quickly and then iteratively improving it based on user feedback and changing priorities.

So far so good, so you would expect that by introducing an Agile way of working and Agile roles like a Product Owner, product thinking will implicitly be adopted. However, I have seen that adopting true product thinking is easier said than done.

Challenges

Typical challenges I faced were:

• Hybrid between Project and Product organisation Since the Agile transformation was no company wide initiative we had to deal with a hybrid where a traditional project organisation had to work closely together with the new Agile organisation. This way of working is far from optimal. It is like connecting two incompatible connectors with each other. There is a mismatch in mindset, terminology, methodology, metrics and unfortunately even the definition of value.

• Lack of strong Product Ownership Roles like the Product Owner and Product Management are crucial in the success of a product oriented organisation. Since the Product Owners and Product Management should have a very close relation with the business we decided to staff these roles with business people. Unfortunately, the business organisation was often a typical project organisation, not able to provide the needed support and mandate to their Product Owners.

• Clear definition of Products An obvious constraint for a product oriented organisation is that you have a clear understanding of your products. Properly defining these products and their governance takes time and effort and was not seen as directly value adding, so this obvious constraint was postponed too long.

Lessons learned and recommendations

• Introducing a Product Owner role as a consequence of introducing an Agile way of working does not make you a product oriented organisation.

• To become a product oriented organisation when you come from a project oriented organisation you have to make changes on many aspects in your operating model like portfolio management, funding etc. to ensure the consistency of whole operating model.

• If possible aim to become an end-2-end product oriented organisation. Creating a hybrid between a project organisation and product organisation is probably costing more value than it will deliver value.

• I have seen that the teams and the Product Owners embrace the ownership of a product and are enthusiastic about working in a product oriented organisation. So by facilitating this way of working for them they will be able to create more value for the organisation.

• Invest in good Product Owners since they make or break a product oriented organisation.