Measure what matters: Paradigm shift from Project-Centric to Product-Centric Delivery Approach #closeralignmenttobusinessstrategy #measurableoutcome

32% of the businesses identified in the Gartner survey claim that ‘a need to deliver more quickly’ is their primary driver of adoption of a product-centric application approach.

Instilling a product-centric approach and collaborating with ecosystem partner(s) with?product mindset?helps align IT organizational structure with product-centric roles and fortify the business partnership, thereby creating new business models with innovative products and services and expanding business through more significant digital opportunities.

"In a project mindset, the assumption is that work is predictable and repeatable enough that it can be broken down into a series of steps with milestones, each allocated to resources and tracked with a timeline and budget," by Mik Kersten.

Projects are identified based on probable business cases and approval. Business opportunities from various Business or IT initiatives are identified, prioritized based on potential business benefits and estimated cost, to create a strong business case. This is done under the assumption that the exact market needs, the cost to be incurred and the potential benefits are known upfront. Once the #business case is approved, #projects are initiated to get them executed. But, we no more live in a world of total #certainty.

The ongoing projects are usually evaluated based on its adherence to the defined #scope, #schedule and #cost, and of course #quality. In a stable environment, where the scope, schedule and cost can be defined upfront, this provides a predictable approach for management and governance.

Whereas in the volatile and uncertain world that we live in with the very fact that software is not a physical good, accurate predictions are nowhere close to reality. Hence, software development cannot be a predictable process!

With the adaptive approach becoming the norm for software development, applying the project management principle that endures predictability is a challenge. Projects can no longer be the vehicle for adaptive predictable software development paradigm. Then, what is the alternative approach?

Introducing the 'Product-Centric Delivery' Model

A 'Product-Centric Delivery' model is a new way of organizing people, working with ecosystem partners and continuously delivering value to the end customers.

32% of the businesses identified in the Gartner survey claim that ‘a need to deliver more quickly’ is their primary driver of adoption of a product-centric application approach.

With the growth of iterative Agile and DevOps, teams now can address far better product management mindset.?Below are the Key steps to achieve Product centric delivery Model to measure what matters the most.

1.?????Identify Products

?Organizations across the world provide value to their customers in the form of goods or services. These goods or services are called products and they are often driven by software and IT systems. For example, to a Pharma health science customer that provides digital interaction services to its HCP, its 'Online Digital Analytics Experience App” becomes a product. Similarly, for a retail company, its 'Click and collect” becomes a product.

2.?????Organize and Fund Stable Teams Around a Product

• ? Once products are identified, the next step is to organize and fund teams around these products. These teams can be Capability leader/Product Owner, product manager, Agile coach, and DevOps architect and team.
• ?They must be outcome-oriented, long living, cross-functional and empowered to build and deliver the products on their own.
• ?An organization with a product mindset starts to fund products incrementally and iteratively. It provides flexibility that enables experimentation and allows the team to adapt to changes in business priorities. The built-team ensures that the organization is allocating funding responsibly to steer the agility and innovation to achieve strategic objectives.
• They can be organized as a 'team-of-teams' or 'squads', resulting in better collaboration, focus and ownership from any corner of the world. This will also help in scaling the overall capacity. A common 'Shared Services' team, supporting multiple products might be an added advantage.

Figure 1: Product-Centric Delivery Operating Model

Additional Reference: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/tribe-squad-chapter-20-chapters-service-oriented-vivek-sinha?trk=pulse-article

https://www.scrumwithstyle.com/ing-improves-on-the-so-called-spotify-model-using-less/

? 3.?????Set Vision, Define Objectives and outcome, Deliver and Measure Value

• ? After the products and the teams are in place, you need to define the 'Product Vision'. The Product Vision defines the reason for its existence and the outcome that it is trying to achieve. It acts like a NorthStar, providing guidance for all the decisions made around product development and delivery.
• Measure the delivered business value at an EPIC or a Feature level, rather than at a User Story level.

1. Will this EPIC or Feature enable you to sell more units?
2. Will this EPIC or Feature allow you or your organization to make more profit?
3. Will this EPIC or Feature enable reduced operating costs for your business?
4. Will this EPIC or Feature enable a new capability for your end-users?
5. Will this EPIC or Feature reduce the manual effort for your team or end-users?

• The business stakeholders define the product vision and derive the near-term objectives that will guide the teams to further decide the set of initiatives they need to work on.
• The teams then identify relevant product features, plan and deliver those in short increments or timeboxes, thereby delivering continuous value.
• At the end of each time-box, the stakeholders will measure the outcome with the stated objectives and changes in the market needs. The findings will help the business to decide on whether to continue investing in the product or not.

Examples of outcome in Product Delivery:

v?The number of people who use the Product including screen time.

v?The system load that users place on the system in Production

v?Highest customer value focus through single Product Backlog and improve completion of “Epic” items.

v?Delivery of value every Sprint through cross-functional teams

v?Happiness and skills improvement

v?Support ticket %decrease

v?comments on social media

v?Platform adoption

v?NPS Score

Conclusion

Product-Centric Delivery paves a new way of organizing people and continuously delivering value with more emphasis on Outcome rather than the Output. It provides a continuous flow of work to the product teams and continuous value to the end users. It aligns the business strategy to software development and execution, while empowering the teams to decide what is best for their product.?Instilling a product-centric approach and collaborating with a?product centric ecosystem helps align IT organizational structure with product-centric roles and fortify the business partnership, thereby creating new business models with innovative products and services and expanding business through more significant digital opportunities.