Innovative Consultants - February Newsletter

Newsbytes

February 2021

Newsbytes

February 2021


A product mindset is a holistic approach to delivering value for customers — prioritizing continuous evolution, data-driven decisions, and customer delight. Organizations should push their teams to embrace a product mentality. The process requires fundamentally changing how you think about delivering value. Teams with a product mindset are strategic, agile, and customer-driven. They focus on outcomes rather than output, and measure success by the value they create for customers and for the business.
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At IC, we work to solve business problems and delivering solutions instead of capabilities.

Based on our experience, here are the biggest areas of challenges we see teams face when adopting a product mindset:

Prioritization

Instead of spending months pursuing unrelated projects or waiting for a behemoth spec to be completed, you can focus on the releases and features that deliver value to customers. Different teams should see a quantitative measure of the value of each product priority and understand how it aligned with the broader company and product goals.

People

It is crucial to gain buy-in from the complete organization. Executives, portfolio managers, and product managers should convince the broader team of all the benefits. A huge part of driving this change is increasing people's knowledge of product management principles. Cross-functional collaboration should be encouraged to have a more seamless approach to the work.

Process

Any transformation will include significant process changes. A product management lifecycle should be defined and processes at both the initiative and release level should be documented for all teams to use. Clear phases, approvals, and status workflows should be included. This increases visibility into plans and unites everyone around a shared goal.

Progress

Organizations need new data-driven ways to report on their real impact for the business. Helping the team and the company achieve its goals is what really matters. Tracking efficiency and revenue-generating metrics is the key.

Moving to a product-driven process is a major transformation — everyone must work together to put customer needs first and continually improve delivery

Start small. Identify a few forward-leaning people and projects that can be reimagined from a product mindset. Set goals, put customers' needs at the center of your planning, create visual roadmaps, and measure the business outcomes. Show success and then repeat.

There's No “I” in Team

Anish has the mind of a developer with the heart of a designer. Truly a walking, talking paradox of knowledge and grace. Nothing can keep him from finding the latest optimized scripts to propel each project to the next stratosphere of excellence. If you want to be on his team you must come ready with technical process as well as creative elegance to ensure an outstanding user experience that makes you feel like you are floating in the clouds...literally. Anish is a thrill seeker and enjoys fast cars.

Check out one of her favorite quotes: