Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
๐กโ๏ธ๐ Can a Product-Led Organization use a PROJECT Operating Model?
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Over the years, I have worked with many tech startups. Reader Heidi asked an interesting question as a follow-up to yesterday's email about Product-Led Growth, Product-led Org, and Product Operating Models: "Can a Product-Led Org have a Project Operating Model?" First of all - I'll admit that I ran my product delivery organization using a Project operating model in a Product-led Org, 20 years ago. So it is factually possible (but not necessarily recommended...) Over the years, I have worked with many tech startups. Most were Product-led but managed their product organization using a project operating model. They run agile sprints, they might even deploy and release continuously, but they manage to scope and timeline. The movement towards a Product operating model means aligning these teams around clear, strategic outcome-oriented goals and measures and empowering them to determine what products and capabilities to build to delight their customers and achieve these goals. Even most product-led organizations are stuck in a feature factory, which shows how hard it is for other organizations to adopt a real product orientation and operating models. But that's also where the promise is... the ability to leverage agility to deliver awesome products. |
Scaling w/ Agility
Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
Is Human in the Loop the real goal with AI? It's a starting point, but I think the goal is to shift to Human in the Double Loop Maybe its even bigger than that. Maybe Agentic AI is the path to unlocking Human Agency A leader I talked to yesterday wasn't sure what their work will look like a year from now. We were finishing an AI coaching sprint in which they shifted from chatting with AI and using Claude Code for very specific tasks to unleashing agentic AI on several complex problems,...
Reader, I just wrapped up a great conversation with Clemens Adolphs, co-founder of AIce Labs, for the Scaling With Agility podcast. We dug into a question we both see more and more leaders wrestling with: Why do so many AI proof-of-concept projects look promising on paper, but never scale past the pilot? Clemens and I discussed some emerging practices for dealing with the pace and uncertainty of developing internal AI capabilities. Here are a few of the ideas we unpacked: โ How to avoid the...
"Instead of Portfolio Management - Just Create Product Teams" - Have you heard that before, Reader? While I understand the angst against Portfolio Management Theater as a solution to Agile Theater... And while I agree wholeheartedly that the north star is to descale by reorganizing around value I find reality a bit more nuanced....Most leaders I encounter can't "just create product teams" their way out of decades of complex products and systems. None of them are Jeff Bezos - they don't have...