Dear all,
earlier this week, gtmhub’s CPO, Jenny Herald, invited me into her podcast „Dreams with Deadlines“.Jenny’s last question to me was which advice I would give to managers. And I answered that I would suggest starting thinking about the ends, not the means – to „start with why“.
For a successful digital transformation, IT projects require clear intent: What are the ulterior business goals that we want to achieve with what we are building? Stated intent provides teams with a clear direction and gives them the means to decide on business value and, as a consequence, what to build with priority.
I have written multiple times in this blog about the need to transform „feature factories“. Those of you who work with us know that we are strong advocates of introducing product management methods and outcome-oriented goal setting (think OKRs) into IT, to increase focus and improve the delivery of business value.
For that reason I would this week like to suggest two posts by my personal “product management superhero“ Marty Cagan (if you have not read his book „Inspired“ yet, it’s lightweight enough to make a great holiday read!):
Meaningful Transformation –
in this post Marty Cagan describes the steps necessary to make the move to true product teams
Click to view!
Keys to Successful Transformation –
lists the 10 essential prerequisites to transform feature factories into empowered product organisations
One last thought: many of the corporate IT teams that we are working with inherently already are in the position of „Product Management“ teams; tasked to translate „business demands“ into priorities for their – more often than not – outsourced development teams (+ „managing“ these suppliers).
Providing these teams with a stated Mission, strategic (business) goals, and empowering them to manage to business outcomes could make a critical difference for the success of their overall organizations.
Weekend Reading will take a hiatus for the next three weeks while I will be on vacation. We’ll be back with a new series of actionable insights in the early fall.
Have a great (late) summer!
All the best,
Godehard