How do we move from a project-based organization towards a product organization? There are at least two systems of work we need to change: The management system and the culture of management How the teams work and their team culture. I’m not sure it’s that simple to explain. There might be more systems I don’t […]
How could we organize if we want flow efficiency? We would reward managers by their span of service instead of control, part 3, stop organizing by function, and move to something that looks like a product-based organization? My transforming idea for this question was to think about the organization as legacy code. We understand how to
This series is about how you might move to a product-based organization. Part 1 was about how when we organize by function, the recognition and rewards might prevent a successful agile transformation. Part 2 was about one possibility for moving to a product-based organization. Before we get to who moves where, we need to consider the manager
If you’re thinking about an agile transformation, you already know about feature teams. You might even call them/use them as product teams. You might wonder about organizing all the work as product work. See Your Current Organization Many organizations use functions to organize people. The “Typical Product Development Organization” shows the kind of organization I
In Part 1, I suggested that when we organize by function, the recognition and rewards might prevent a successful agile transformation. In this part, I’ll discuss an option for a product-oriented organization. Consider a Product-Oriented Organization Instead of organizing by function, consider a product-oriented organization. Again, I am not saying this is the only way
A couple of weeks ago, I delivered the first version of my Free Your Agile Team talk at Agile New England. Here’s a direct link to the video. I spoke about the problem of a framework-first approach to transforming to an agile culture. I also spoke about the plethora of team-based coaches and the insufficiency of management coaching. (I
One of the big problems I see with a product orientation (as opposed to a project) is in preparing for ongoing work. You might not start the next project for this product after you complete this project. You might have to round-robin projects for various products because you don’t have enough people to do all
We hear a lot these days about project-based organizations vs. product-based organizations. Much of what we do in software is in service of products. Products tend to evolve over time. When we work on projects, we learn from the experience. However, once we finish this release, the “product” (the output of the project) doesn’t change
I recorded a Being Human podcast with Richard Atherton. It’s wide-ranging from thinking about agile approaches as a way to improve organizational flow and what that means for us as humans. I had a blast. I think Richard did, too. He’s a think-before-he-speaks person, and if you watch the video, you can see him thinking.
Many people draw distinctions between people who do management-kind of work and people who do “individual contributor” kind of work. I’ve been asking if they mean individual work or team member work. Sometimes, they do mean individual work. More often, they mean team member. Our culture shapes our language. (And, our language shapes our culture.)