The agile transformation has been in the works for about 20 years. Most companies believe that this is the best way to develop great digital products while also keeping developers happy.
When the tech industry moved from waterfall to agile most companies failed to realise the importance of the marketing department. The agile movement wanted to give more power to developers. That is clearly the right way to go but knowledge of product development needs to be an active part of each product team. Usually the marketing department was replaced by marketing professionals that do ads and sales material, but the old marketing departments were actually product professionals with knowledge of customer interaction, ability to put together focus groups, business insights, competitor analysis, pricing, packaging and so on. What we now call marketing was called promotion before and is only a small part of the product development that marketing departments did.
We believe that empowered, autonomous and agile product teams are the future but we need to infuse the teams with real knowledge of product development. We live in a time of global competition and for example our American competitors in silicon valley are way ahead of us. Sweden has been a strong player within tech, we have benefited from the home computer movement and a high level of advanced education within tech. We are also a very rich country. But many developing countries are catching up with us and have worked specifically on becoming tech savvy. We can believe that we are simply better than developing countries or we can realise that we have to step up our game in order to keep the lead.
We have looked into what the largest tech companies in the world are doing and this is our recipe for success:
OKRs
Google’s secret (not so secret) weapon for creating an incredibly fast moving company is the most efficient way to lead tech companies. OKRs keep the company aligned and focused but it is also the end of requirements and hard deadlines. Most other businesses work with KPIs and this is a related way to create actual outcomes, not just output. OKRs are not hard to understand and not specifically hard to formulate. The difficult part is that it requires commitment throughout the company and it needs to be long term. It also requires a cultural change in some cases. It is an honest, no bull-shit, way of work that will terrify some people in organisations. But if you can get it right it will increase productivity by up to ten times.
Support Product managers and leaders
The art of product development have been lost in Swedish tech companies. Most put down successful product development on luck and technical innovation but there is so much more to this and that needs to be acknowledged. Workshops for all product managers and leaders on the basics of product development and tools to do the job should be implemented and continuous coaching is needed in order to deliver on this challenging job.
Implement a model for product development
A model for product development needs to be implemented. We believe that it should be Marty Cagans model for Continuous discovery and delivery but it can be something else. But it needs to be something concrete. Companies mastered the agile way of working when specific models and educations started to surface. This is the same way. A team isn’t autonomous just because you say they are. It needs to be a shared understanding of what that means and a way to measure it. The way it is now Product managers are being asked if their product idea has been validated by customers but there is no model put in place to make sure that the company has a shared view of what that validation may entail.
Commitment and longevity
The most important thing here is that there are no shortcuts, you can’t just skip some steps. Changing a tech organisation into a mean lean production machine is doable but there needs to be a high level of commitment throughout the organisation. And no giving up after two months either, changing an organisation is always also about changing the culture and that takes time. But the rewards are you might just keep your company alive.
