@johncutlefish's blog

I am currently writing weekly here and have all my 2020 posts here.

The Big Leaps

Published: March 18, 2019

My usual list-compulsion. This time…the big leaps I observe teams taking in their product development related continuous improvement journey

  • Fully cross-functional teams (w/dedicated team members including UX and testers)
  • Teams have direct access to customers/users
  • Team operates as a team (not a work-group, many teams of one)
  • Opportunity focused roadmap (vs. solution focused)
  • Teams have direct access to insights/data
  • Team able to link day-to-day work to core company bets (short/mid/long term)
  • Design involved in opportunity and solution exploration/research
  • Developers involved in opportunity and solution exploration/research
  • “Non customer-facing” work viewed as equal to customer-facing work
  • Products, capabilities, missions, and services over projects
  • Embrace DevOps and related practices (e.g. CI/CD, trunk-based dev, etc.)
  • Quality/craft is valued. Minimal amount of reactive/failure-mode work
  • Value stream orientation vs. structuring around components, technology
  • Team funded based on outcomes/capabilities vs. project completio
  • Managers shift perspective to servant leadership — facilitators, coaches, catalysts
  • Shift to smaller batches and more frequent integration/deployment
  • Ability to run multiple, concurrent, context-dependent operating models across org
  • Thoughtful approach to increasing organizational resiliency/adaptability/anti-fragility
  • Shift from delivery stance, to learning/innovation/differentiation stance
  • Balanced portfolio of bets. Risk and uncertainty exploited (not avoided)