by Janus Boye
How do you really scale a product organisation? This is one of the topics we keep getting back to in our product management community.
Growing pains are familiar in the software business and product management is a key part of taking any product firm from the early stages to the next level.
In a recent member conference call, VP Product Derek Koch from Bay Area-based software firm Pointcare hosted a talk titled “Evolving Product in a Scaling Business”. Based on his vast experience, he shared how to best set the stage to enable and support growth in your company.
Moving too fast and breaking things?
Are you sometimes busy fixing problems created when trying to move to fast? In Derek’s view, that’s a common problem and a clear indicator of being in a company that’s too sales driven.
Derek also shared one of my all-time favorite questions when trying to address a problem:
What’s the problem you are trying to solve and for who?
Needless to say, getting a good understanding of the problem is key to finding a good solution. Often you either end up solving different problems or you create new ones as mentioned above.
5 key considerations to consider as a product leader
Before the shared his key considerations, he opened by using this key definition of what it is all about:
Set the stage for delighting stakeholders by shipping value and quality regularly
Why stakeholders you might ask? And why not users? According to Derek:
If your engineers feel like they are are trapped underneath the weight of problems, you are probably not delighting anyone or really ready to scale. Employees will also feel the benefit and pride of shipping something that works, so don’t only consider your end users.
The 5 key considerations Derek shared are:
Culture. A clear culture empowers the team and you can’t be everywhere.
Recruiting. Finding the right people is key to growth. Make sure to debrief and debate.
Platform & pipeline. Let the craftsmen select their tools in pursuing the goal.
Process. This is an enabler. Keep to constant themes and let the team experiment.
Milestones and Incentives. Move to milestones that has value for the business. Deadlines are either toxic or abundantly obvious.
Each of which you can hear more about in the recording below:
Learn more about scaling your product organisation
According to Shaun from Elastic, working distributed is a strength in the long run as it's better for scaling. Read more in this piece on Distributed Advantage At Elastic.
Back in 2017, we also heard from Maren at SAP on their experiences with Scaling design thinking.
Finally, you might also want to this guest post on The Challenges Of Efficient Roadmapping.