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Resources for product teams from industry experts.

If a company wants to raise the bar for the product organization, they need to think differently about product. Instead of looking at product as just a part of the technology organization (or worse, the IT organization), they need to think about product as the organization. I am not talking about power structure or even org structure. I am talking about how product needs to be the value driver of the organization as opposed to just a feature factory for the rest of the organization.

As I engage with these types of organizations, another lesson I’ve learned is that, if the executive team isn’t on board with this product operating model, the chances of successful transformation are slim.

— EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products (Silicon Valley Product Group) by Marty Cagan

Source: Amazon Kindle

Related Stories and Excerpts:

  1. If the technology is new, you very likely don’t have anyone on the teams who has been trained on this new technology. This fact ends up scaring off many leaders, or they occasionally think they have to partner with a third party that does have the necessary experience. But if the technology is important to you, your company needs to learn that technology. And the sooner the better. The good news is that this is rarely that difficult. Your best engineers are probably already considering this technology and would love to be able to explore further. In the best […]
  2. Attaining alignment is not just a process of adding new things; it is also a never-ending process of identifying and doggedly correcting misalignments that push a company away from its core ideology or impede progress. If the building layout impedes progress, change the building layout or move. If the strategy is misaligned with the core, change the strategy. If the organization structure inhibits progress, change the organization structure. If the incentive system rewards behavior inconsistent with the core, change the incentive system. Keep in mind that the only sacred cow in a visionary company is its core ideology. Anything […]
  3. I bet you’ve heard the saying “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” This saying stays true in the so-called “forest thinking” as well. When we analyze the intensive boundaries of a problem, considering every single aspect—or tree—of it, we can lose our focus on what matters. Instead of trying to narrow down if a particular dishwasher stopped working on Sunday afternoon, it’s more useful to see how often the dishwasher breaks down in general, how big the load is when it breaks down compared to the load when it works well, and so on. Forest thinking shows […]
  4. Good teams have product, design, and engineering sit side by side, and they embrace the give and take between the functionality, the user experience, and the enabling technology. Good teams get their inspiration and product ideas from their vision and objectives, from observing customers’ struggle, from analyzing the data customers generate from using their product, and from constantly seeking to apply new technology to solve real problems. Good teams understand who each of their key stakeholders are, they understand the constraints that these stakeholders operate in, and they are committed to inventing solutions that work not just for users […]
  5. The manager role is the “catalyst” role. As with all catalysts, the manager’s function is to speed up the reaction between two substances, thus creating the desired end product. Specifically, the manager creates performance in each employee by speeding up the reaction between the employee’s talents and the company’s goals and between the employee’s talents and the customers’ needs. When hundreds of managers play this role well, the company becomes strong, one employee at a time. No doubt, in today’s slimmed-down business world, most of these managers also shoulder other responsibilities. They are expected to be subject-matter experts, individual […]

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