Product strategy realization: Build a scalable, customer-centric tech organization delivering sustainable value to lead the game

Cases

Product strategy realization: Build a scalable, customer-centric tech organization delivering sustainable value to lead the game

Start / Cases / Product strategy realization: Build a scalable, customer-centric tech organization delivering sustainable value to lead the game

Summary

The initiative aimed to create a more effective and collaborative product development setup within the client’s tech organization and business stakeholders. The merger of two teams was designed to enhance collaboration and streamline efforts, addressing inefficiencies like misaligned stakeholder requests, feature creep, and lack of coordination. The initiative focused on refining the product strategy, enhancing team collaboration, and aligning the development process with the client’s long-term business goals. Divided into two phases, the first half established product definitions, governance alignment, and agile practices, while the second half aimed to refine the product setup and build a sustainable, scalable framework. The ongoing iterations will boost a high-performing, product-driven tech organization, requiring continuous alignment with business needs and mutual appreciation of expertise.

The so-called Next Gen Value Stream initiative aimed to enhance the clients’ product strategy by improving customer centricity, optimizing development processes, and aligning with strategic goals. Through agile implementation and process optimization, the project delivered a sustainable product framework, ensuring long-term value in volatile environments.

Background

Needs that created sense of urgency

The assignment was initiated to establish a more effective and collaborative product development setup within the clients’ tech organization and towards its stakeholders on the business side of things. The need for a sustainable product framework became evident as two teams, both integral to the same value stream supporting the same vital life cycle, were merged. This merger was designed to enhance collaboration and streamline efforts, ensuring that both teams could better address business needs throughout the life cycle.

However, inefficiencies such as misaligned stakeholder requests, feature creep, and a lack of coordination were slowing down the development process. The initiative aimed to refine the product strategy, enhance team collaboration, and create a product development process that was aligned with the clients’ long-term business goals. The assignment was divided into two phases over 2024. The first half focused on establishing product definitions, aligning governance, and implementing agile practices to foster continuous improvement. The second half focused on refining the product setup, eliminating inefficiencies, and building a sustainable, scalable framework for ongoing product development.

What we did

Team Collaboration & Merger: We merged two teams within the same value stream to create a more cohesive and effective approach for addressing business needs across the deal life cycle, enabling better collaboration and reducing fragmentation in product development.

Product Definition & Governance: Using the Jobs to be Done theory (Christensen Institute) and a clear focus on product value proposition (Strategyzer), we defined product areas with assigned product managers responsible for realizing the value streams’ themes on an aggregated level, looking at a broader horizon than weeks or months. This ensured enhancement towards products tied directly to solving real customer problems (needs vs. requests), driving increased value over time. Governance structures were established to ensure alignment across teams and stakeholders, enabling a shared understanding of priorities and goals. The setup also enabled the team to increase the sense of owning its’ roadmap, working in an agile cycle in increments, while reporting to a steering committee working on quarterly basis.

Customer-Centric Product Strategy: We applied the Jobs to be Done framework to deeply understand customer needs, focusing on their desired outcomes. This helped ensure the product strategy was continually rooted in customer-driven needs and goals. The outcome of a pilot study revealed significant potential in understanding and acting on needs related to the revenue side, which, compared to the cost side, could enable gains for the company on a nine-figure rather than six-figure level, here’s still some great potential to realize going forward!

Agile Implementation: We introduced Agile methodologies such as PI planning, sprints, demos, and retrospectives to promote continuous learning and adaptation. Agile helped to improve the product development process, making it more iterative, responsive, and adaptable to changing customer needs.

Process Optimization: We identified inefficiencies like feature creep and misaligned priorities, focusing on optimizing collaboration to ensure that efforts were dedicated to high-impact areas of the product, in alignment with the product value propositions.

Result

Stronger Team Collaboration: The merging of the two teams led to improved communication and alignment toward shared goals within the deal value stream, reducing silos and improving overall effectiveness.

Aligned Product Strategy: By integrating Jobs to be Done framework and Product Value Proposition methodology the product roadmap became more focused on customer outcomes, leading to clearer product definitions, higher customer satisfaction, and tighter alignment with the clients’ strategic objectives both on the business- and the tech side. We shall not forget that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and this is a long-term work that we’ve only started.

Increased Efficiency: Process optimizations, including the reduction of feature creep and delays, resulted in a faster, more streamlined development cycle with quicker, more targeted product iterations.

Successful Agile Integration: Agile methodologies were successfully embedded into the team’s workflows, leading to greater team confidence, improved performance, and a more adaptive and continuous value delivery process.

Sustainable Product Setup: The focus on value propositions and customer outcomes created a sustainable, scalable framework that ensures the clients’ product development can deliver long-term value and stay aligned with evolving customer needs.

…and the iterations going forward will boost a high-performing, product-driven tech organization, while ongoing alignment with business needs requires constant attention and a mutual appreciation of each other’s areas of expertise.