Product-Driven Organizations: The Evolution of Agile

The Evolution of Agile

Agile has been great. Revolutionary, even. Organizations are producing software faster, creating more cross-functional and collaborative teams than ever before. However, a lot of Agilists are experiencing diminishing returns on their investment to go Agile. Why is that?

The reality is that you’ve likely tapped the potential of your Agile practices and you’ve reaped all the benefits of the Agile culture that you’ve instilled already. The good news is that your journey doesn’t have to end here.

The next evolution of Agile is to restructure the business, create a product-driven organization, and build a system of delivery that’s conducive to getting more mileage out of your investment in Agile.

Video Transcript

As an organization, as we continue on this Agile journey and the work that we’re doing kind of continues to form the body of knowledge and how organizations operate. We’re going to start to realize that pretty soon that Agile coaching and Agile practices and Agile culture absolutely move the needle. As a community, I can say for sure that we are definitely starting to move the needle on doing more work in less time. I think that as organizations continue on this Agile journey, which is super exciting and we as a community are paving new ground all the time. In fact, when I even Google product-driven organization, there’s a lack of consensus on what a product-driven organization actually is. It’s that new. We start to recognize that we’ve kind of, you know, pushed the limits of the value that we can unleash using Agile culture and practices without restructuring the organization.

Really thinking about our organization as a system of delivery and thinking about how we flow value through that system of delivery. That no amount of Agile coaching or training will be able to move the needle beyond a certain point unless we look at restructuring for the delivery of value within that organization. Product-driven organizations are the ecosystem that really creates that flow of value that organizations are looking for and the business benefits that organizations are seeking to accomplish when they start to implement Agile methods. Product-driven organizations are really about refocusing on the customer and on the product. This requires a huge mindset shift. When we move to a product organization, we’re being very thoughtful and strategic about how we form teams specifically to colocate, to encapsulate for dependencies.