By Andrew Park | 2024-10-22
David Luke, a board member of Agile Alliance, is spearheading their Reimagining Agile initiative, aimed at reshaping practices to become more product-oriented in software development. A major outcome of this effort is the Agile Product Management Initiative, which seeks to unify product management and broader development communities. It emphasizes adapting processes to align more closely with product strategy and design principles throughout the delivery process. This initiative empowers product leaders, development teams, and designers to deliver products that meet customer needs, satisfy stakeholders, and create positive societal impact.
David brings significant experience to this endeavor, having worked at a leading bank that undertook a similar transformation. The bank adapted its practices to become more product-oriented, focusing on integrating product management and design into workflows. In a recent interview, David discussed the steps taken at the bank to successfully align product models with methodologies, creating a more cohesive and customer-centric approach. You can watch David’s full presentation of this story on YouTube here.
The Challenge: Making Agile More Product Oriented
The traditional implementation of Agile frameworks often emphasizes process efficiency over product outcomes, which can create a disconnect between development practices and product management goals. At the bank, this gap was evident, as Agile teams struggled to align product vision with delivery methods. Recognizing this, the transformation effort focused on evolving software delivery processes to be more adaptable to product management needs, enabling more cohesive collaboration between teams and ensuring that product strategy and design were fully integrated into workflows.
Core Strategies for Adapting Agile Practices to Product-Oriented Needs
David described several strategies that were essential for making practices more product-oriented:
1. Embedding Customer Feedback in Every Stage
The transformation started by integrating customer insights into every step of the process. From strategic planning to product development, customer feedback was prioritized to ensure product outcomes aligned with customer needs.
Continuous customer discovery became the foundation for more product-oriented sprints, with customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) research informing design decisions.
2. Adapting Development Pace to Product Development Rhythm
Practices were adjusted to match the product development cycle rather than imposing a rigid 2 week sprint cadence. This ensured that ceremonies, such as planning and retrospectives, were timed to support key product milestones, fostering a more natural flow between product vision and execution.
3. Dynamic Product Planning and Funding
Product councils were established to make funding more dynamic, adapting resource allocation based on evolving product requirements. This flexible funding model allowed teams to respond quickly to changes in customer needs, supporting a more product-focused environment.
Teams were empowered to pivot their product strategies in response to feedback without the constraints of traditional capital expenditure processes, making processes more responsive to product outcomes.
4. Restructuring Teams for Product Alignment
Cross-functional teams, called “quads,” were formed to bring together product management, engineering, and design, ensuring a product-oriented approach in each sprint.
Product managers were deeply embedded in these teams, taking on expanded roles that included traditional product owner responsibilities, such as backlog prioritization and user story refinement, to maintain strong alignment between product vision and execution.
5. Integrating Onshore and Offshore Product Development
Onshore and offshore teams were integrated into the product-oriented framework, with shared product goals and clear communication channels.
This integration enabled consistent alignment between practices and product objectives, allowing teams to scale flexibly while maintaining focus on product outcomes.
Modifying Ceremonies to Support Product Goals
To make practices more product-oriented, ceremonies were adapted to emphasize product goals:
1. Outcome-Driven Ceremonies
Traditional ceremonies, such as daily standups and reviews, were adapted to focus more on product outcomes rather than process metrics. For example, reviews were centered around demonstrating product value and progress toward strategic goals.
Retrospectives were reoriented to identify improvements in product delivery, emphasizing how processes could be further refined to support product objectives.
2. Enhanced Cross-Functional Collaboration
Practices were modified to facilitate deeper collaboration between product management, design, and engineering teams, promoting a more holistic approach to product development.
Teams were encouraged to maintain ongoing dialogue throughout sprints, ensuring that product goals were consistently prioritized over process adherence.
Establishing Product-Centric Career Paths
Adapting processes to be more product-oriented also required redefining career paths for product roles:
1. Clear Pathways for Product Roles
A transparent career path for product managers was developed, emphasizing skills that align with both product strategy and execution. The progression included roles from associate to principal product managers, with clear milestones related to product development expertise.
Training was tailored to emphasize product strategy, design thinking, and collaboration with teams, helping product managers build skills that support a product-oriented approach.
2. Retaining Talent by Focusing on Product Outcomes
By adapting practices to focus more on product outcomes, the organization was able to attract and retain product professionals who were motivated by achieving tangible results.
The flexibility to work on diverse digital products, FinTech integrations, and innovative initiatives like banking-as-a-service made the organization more appealing to top talent.
Role of Leadership in Driving Product-Oriented Practices
Strong leadership was critical to adapting processes for a more product-oriented approach. Leaders, including the Chief Digital Officer, championed the shift from process-centric to a product-focused model. They encouraged experimentation, continuous product discovery, and ongoing alignment with customer needs. This leadership approach fostered an environment where teams felt empowered to drive product outcomes while remaining flexible and adaptable.
Conclusion
David Luke’s insights demonstrate that development practices can be effectively adapted to support a more product-oriented approach in software development. By embedding customer feedback, adjusting cadence, and aligning teams with product goals, the bank successfully integrated practices with product management. The result was a more cohesive, flexible, and responsive framework that met customer needs and delivered business value.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to adapt your software development practices to be more product-oriented, be sure to check out my upcoming book, Product Oriented Software Engineering (POSE). It provides actionable strategies for aligning product management with engineering efforts to create successful outcomes. You can learn more here.
