Agile and Product Transformation need to go hand in hand
Transforming an established organisation is never easy and never straight forward. Therefore, defining the target state of where the organisation needs to be in the future is crucial. The transformation will only succeed if the understanding of where to transform towards is shared with everyone helping the change to happen. This especially includes the executives.
Agile transformations typically start in the tech department. Initiated to get your deliverables under control, remove the gap between development and operations and to get individuals to cooperate and form strong teams.
If it works out as planned, tech departments often try to bring these benefits to the rest of the organisation.
While some of the agile principles not only work for engineering, they were established exactly for them. Hoping that these pricinples alone will make the organisation a better one overall is naive.
This is where we see a lot of pushback against agile. It does not deliver what is often promised by the initiators driving the transformation. Increased revenue through faster solutions are not materialising.
It misses to change the tech teams from order takers to problem solvers. The team who defines the product and the team that builds the product needs to be one and the same: the product team. The tech department is not able to change this on its own.
Executives are the ones that need to adopt their thinking. Once an organisation has passed the early start-up phase, the product becomes too big to be defined by anyone else but the team that talks to the customer, understands the technology and builds along the company strategy. While agile is not acting against this, an agile transformation alone is not making the change happen to the extent it needs to happen.
Imagine a music streaming service. It’s not about executing the order to build, let’s say, a social playlist (and yes, even with this order, there are enough details to solve). It’s about coming up with the idea, validating it, deciding to build or not build it and then acting on it. In case the executives do not understand their role in this, they will not let the team do it.
As I pointed out in Agile and Product Management in a nutshell, you need both, agile and a product culture. Without product management, your chances diminish to deliver solutions that people want to buy. Without agile, you ship winning solutions way too slow and rarely.
The transformation towards a product culture needs to start at the top. Because it transforms executives from order givers to pointing at problems to solve. It makes product teams to problem solvers and deliver solutions in agile ways.