Ever feel like your product organization is stuck in the mud? Youâre not alone. Many teams start strong, laser-focused on delivering value and achieving product-market fit. But as success scales, things get messy. Dependencies pile up, alignment fades, and suddenly, youâre running a feature factory instead of an empowered product organization. Why Do Product Organizations Stall?Hereâs the typical lifecycle:
![]() The result? Fewer empowered teams, more inefficiencies, and a lot of frustration. Think about it like an upside-down pyramidâwhere most of the work is tangled and component-oriented, teams that can deliver features on their own are in the top 10%, and a team that owns a product/outcome and can run fast feedback loops, trying different features to move the needle on a metric that matters is a unicorn. ![]() Flipping the PyramidTo escape this trap, we need to rethink how work is structured, and push as much work down to the healthier base of the pyramid:
![]() (Does this flipping the pyramid sound familiar? Itâs inspired by the Test Automation Pyramid, which is a key framework in the Agile Testing world.) ![]() NOTE: I got the idea for this article and especially the visual above based on a conversation with John Cutler and his article on Work Shape Mix. Go read it now. Itâs a gem. The Roadmap to ChangeThis isnât an overnight fix. Transforming into a healthy product organization requires:
![]() (This trail map is based on the Portfolio Agility Trail Map â a guide for applying an Agile Product Operating Model at scale) Why It MattersA flipped pyramid means less micromanagement, more innovation, and a clearer path to delivering real value, not just features or timelines. Itâs about creating an environment where empowered teams thrive and your organization can scale without losing its soul. Curious about how to flip your Product Pyramid? Letâs figure out your Product Operating Model Strategyâtogether. âRead When and Why Do We Need a Product Operating Model? On Your Browserâ â Yours, |
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.
When Vered and I got married, my father-in-law gave me a very nice watch as a wedding gift. I didnât wear a watch that often at the time. I wore the watch, but it didnât transform me. It provided the service of telling the time, but even back in 2004, we had phones that had clocks. And I was and am pretty punctual so didnât need that transformation. (And when youâre in Engineering/IT leadership, nobody cares about the watch you wear⌠at least in Israel⌠) Donât tell Eli, but that watch spent...
âGenAI can enable cheaper, faster experimentation / discovery (it compresses the truth curve by reducing the cost of pretotyping style product experimentation techniques)â (Yours truly, in yesterdayâs insight on how AI can really help you build better products) This statement seems to have hit a nerve with reader Elad, who is product leader at a cybersecurity scaleup: âNot everyone can do this⌠New companies, sure. Larger, established companies are knee-deep in mountains of code,...
While the jury is out on the extent of impact GenAI and vibe coding will have on building mission-critical enterprise products⌠Here are some thoughts on how AI can help turn the product flywheel: Use GenAI to enable fuller-stack engineers and reduce tech debt This will enable you to organize smaller product/outcome oriented teams These teams can achieve more with fewer dependencies and streamlined processes (even without looking at opportunities to streamline product dev processes themselves...