The Shift from Agile to Product Management and Operational Practices: A 2018-2024 Evolution
The landscape of software development and business operations has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. Between 2021 and 2024, there has been a clear shift from the widespread adoption of Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, to a broader focus on product management and operations. This change reflects the growing recognition that while Agile has proven helpful in improving team workflows and fostering collaboration, the evolving demands of modern organizations require a more holistic approach. Companies are increasingly turning to product management, design operations (DesignOps), product operations (ProdOps), and research operations (ResearchOps) to bridge the gap between strategy and execution, focusing on creating customer value and driving business outcomes.
This article explores the reasons behind this shift, the key trends shaping this evolution, and what it means for organizations looking to stay competitive in a fast-changing marketplace.
The Rise of Agile and Its Limitations
Agile methodologies, especially Scrum and Kanban, have transformed how teams deliver software and manage projects. Originally developed to improve software development efficiency, communication, and adaptability, Agile’s iterative and customer-centric approach has been widely adopted across industries since the early 2000s. Agile emphasizes collaboration, regular feedback, and flexibility, which helps teams quickly respond to changes and deliver incremental product improvements.
However, as organizations scale, many have discovered that more than Agile alone is needed to address all their operational needs. While Agile is excellent for managing tasks and improving team collaboration, it often needs a strong focus on strategic product management, customer research, and operational efficiency. For example, in large enterprises, scaling Agile frameworks (such as SAFe or LeSS) has often resulted in overly bureaucratic processes that dilute Agile's core principles of adaptability and customer focus.
The limitations of Agile in addressing these higher-level concerns have led companies to look beyond traditional Agile roles and processes. Instead, they focus more on Product Management, design, Product Operations, and Research Operations to build cohesive, end-to-end product development processes.
Product Management: The Strategic Shift
The pivot from Agile to a stronger emphasis on product management reflects a desire to align product development with broader business goals. Product managers (PMs) take on a more comprehensive role than Agile facilitators like Scrum Masters, focusing on executing tasks and defining product vision, understanding market needs, and strategically guiding product development from inception to delivery.
In this context, product management encompasses customer research, competitive analysis, stakeholder management, and product features and prioritization decision-making. Product managers are increasingly viewed as the linchpin connecting engineering, design, sales, and marketing, ensuring that all teams work toward common goals.
Companies like Capital One and JPMorgan Chase have transitioned to this model, integrating Agile practices within product management frameworks rather than maintaining Agile roles as standalone functions. Capital One, for instance, eliminated over 1,100 Agile-specific roles, incorporating Agile principles directly into the responsibilities of product managers and engineers. Banking Dive
By focusing on product management, companies can better ensure that development is customer-centric and aligned with long-term business strategy. Agile remains a tool for execution, but the focus has shifted to building products that drive business value?rather than just delivering software quickly.
DesignOps: Streamlining the Design Process
Design operations, or DesignOps, is another area where organizations focus their attention. As design becomes increasingly important in creating differentiated customer experiences, there is a growing need to streamline and optimize design workflows. DesignOps aims to improve the collaboration between designers and other teams (e.g., product and engineering) by providing the structure and tools needed to scale design efforts across an organization.
DesignOps practices ensure that design teams can efficiently manage their workflows, scale their impact, and maintain product quality. This involves everything from tooling and infrastructure (design systems and prototyping tools) to operational processes (documentation, hand-offs, and collaboration practices).
Companies like Spotify and Airbnb have pioneered DesignOps, ensuring their design teams can operate at scale without sacrificing creativity or efficiency. DesignOps removes friction from the design process, enabling designers to focus on solving customer problems rather than getting bogged down by operational challenges?such as inefficient hand-offs, lack of standardized processes, or poor communication between design and other teams. Agile Academy
.Product Operations: The Backbone of Product Success
While product managers focus on strategy, Product Operations (ProdOps) ensures that product teams can operate efficiently and processes run smoothly. ProdOps is responsible for the tools, data, and processes that product managers and their teams use to deliver value.
At its core, ProdOps is the operational arm of product management. It optimizes workflows, facilitates communication across departments, and ensures product teams have access to the data and insights they need. This can involve everything from setting up product analytics dashboards to managing feedback loops between customers, product teams, and other stakeholders.
Amazon and Google are two examples of companies that have successfully implemented Product Operations to help product teams scale their efforts and maintain operational excellence. By focusing on the operational side of product development, these companies can ensure that their product managers have the support they need to focus on strategic decision-making without getting bogged down by administrative tasks. Innovify
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Research Operations: Enabling Customer-Centricity
Another critical area that is gaining traction is Research Operations (ResearchOps). As organizations place a greater emphasis on customer-centric product development, research becomes increasingly important. However, as research activities scale, companies need systems and processes to ensure that research efforts are organized, repeatable, and impactful.
ResearchOps focuses on optimizing the people, processes, and tools involved in research activities, ensuring that insights are gathered efficiently and shared effectively across the organization. This involves everything from managing participant recruitment and research tools to standardizing research methodologies and ensuring findings are accessible to all teams.
Organizations like Facebook and Uber have invested heavily in ResearchOps, recognizing that adequate research is critical to understanding customer needs and driving product innovation. By building a vital ResearchOps function, these companies can ensure that their research efforts are well-coordinated, scalable, and aligned with business goals.
The Integration of Agile into Modern Product Frameworks
While the shift toward product management and operational practices represents a move away from traditional Agile roles, it does not mean that Agile principles are being abandoned. Instead, Agile is integrated into broader frameworks emphasizing product strategy, customer insights, and operational efficiency.
The role of Agile in modern organizations has shifted from a standalone methodology to a tool that supports cross-functional collaboration, rapid experimentation, and continuous improvement. In this context, Agile practices facilitate the delivery of products and services, but the overarching focus is driving business outcomes and ensuring that products meet customer needs.
This trend is reflected in the increasing adoption of product-led growth (PLG) strategies, where the product is the primary driver of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. PLG companies like Slack and Zoom use Agile methods to iterate on their products rapidly. Still, the focus is on delivering value to customers rather than adhering to strict Agile processes. Innovify
Conclusion: A New Era of Product and Operational Excellence
The shift from Agile to a broader focus on product management, DesignOps, ProdOps, and ResearchOps reflects the evolving needs of modern organizations. While Agile remains an essential tool for managing workflows and improving team collaboration, companies increasingly recognize the need for a more comprehensive approach to product development.
By investing in product management and operational practices, companies can ensure that they build products that align with business goals, meet customer needs, and?scale effectively. This new era focuses on delivering products quickly and creating products that drive long-term success and competitive advantage.
As the industry continues to shift towards Lean product management and the integration of Kanban for managing the entire product lifecycle, professionals in Agile roles must reflect on how they can leverage their existing skills to stay relevant in this evolving landscape. While Agile principles remain valuable, the focus is increasingly shifting toward broader product management and operational frameworks that prioritize efficiency, strategic alignment, and customer value.
For those in traditional Agile roles, such as Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, now is the time to consider how to pivot and adapt. You’ve honed many skills—facilitation, coaching, continuous improvement, and fostering collaboration—that are highly transferable to other product and operations management areas. Expanding your expertise into areas like Product Operations, Research Operations, or even becoming a cross-functional Product Manager can make you a valuable asset to your organization as it evolves.
Moreover, as organizations integrate Agile principles into these broader frameworks, your ability to guide teams through change, manage workflows, and align work with strategic goals will continue to be crucial. The need for flexibility, responsiveness, and customer focus is not disappearing; it’s merely being embedded into more comprehensive product strategies.
The call to action for Agile practitioners is clear: embrace this evolution by seeking opportunities to apply your Agile mindset in new contexts, expand your skill set, and become a leader in driving product and operational success. By doing so, you’ll not only future-proof your career but also contribute to the continued success of your teams and organizations in delivering meaningful outcomes in an increasingly competitive market.
Agile Uprising There is probably a podcast in there somewhere..........
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Product Management Executive | Product Strategist | Innovation-Minded | Successful P&L Leader | Client Engagement Evangelist | Culture of Continuous Improvement Leader | Product Operations
4 个月Great article! I have been in Product Management long enough to have seen the pendulum swing back and forth. When I first started in Product Management, we were responsible for the strategy and outcomes of clients and the business. It was definitely more focused on the larger business and was not too concerned about R&D other than budgeting (looking to the outside of the company). Then PM moved hard towards the development side, being drawn in very closely to help guide R&D to make the best features. This caused too hard of a turn though and many organizations lost the strategic direction needed to produce value to clients or the business. I think what you are speaking of is a healthier focus balance focusing in both areas. The specializations that are forming underneath PM are also just a consequence of the fact that PM is a VERY big job and it is way too much for one person to manage everything. This division of labor also helps to acknowledge that skill sets between the roles are vastly different. For example, strategists are not always best at working with systems/teams to produce views of information but they can do amazing things once the have the information!
Lean Agile Coach Fin-Tech Product Flow Advisor ProKanban Trainer
5 个月The one thing guaranteed in life is change. We as Agilists, Coaches and Leaders need to be flexible and adapt to change. This article is timely and a great read!
This may sound simplistic. My take on DevOps was squishing together dev and ops into the same function. Is that the same for product ops? Are we saying orgs are finally moving towards a model of eliminating the big handoffs between product, design, research and ops? At Spotify my understanding is that their definition of discovery is whole team discovery, not a handoff for this activity. Am I thinking about this right?
Evolving the product & agile ecosystem | Enterprise Agility & Product Coach | Envision what could be
5 个月Absolutely spot on and 100% agree we’re at a crossroads right now for a roles such as scrum masters and agile coaches to think about their future and the direction they want to take their skills and expertise. This article lays out these two options very well, and I think a lot of coaches will start to think about how they can evolve their professional direction and impacts.