(2021-06-18) The Mindset That Kills Product Thinking Help Your Organization Focus On Successful Outcomes

Jeff Patton: The Mindset That Kills Product Thinking – Help your organization focus on successful outcomes. This article is about the service provider anti-pattern baked into our processes.

I start lots of classes and talks by asking “what makes a product great?”

I’ve done this long enough to know that a few things always come up. Things like:
Easy to use
Solves a problem

What I, and lots of other people call these things are outcomes. Outcomes are what your customers and users do, say, and feel.

Impact is the benefit your organization, and the world, gets when lots of people use your product

Monthly or annual recurring revenue

Our customers don’t care about that stuff. But, if you build products, you’d better.

Some nasty things happen if you mistake your business for your actual customer.

We focus on the wrong outcomes.
You’ve seen it before. The business stakeholders say they’re happy. Then the thing you built never gets used.

The service provider model separates those responsible for product outcomes from those responsible for product delivery. Lots of people believe this is a healthy separation of responsibility. I’m not lots of people.

The most successful product companies aren’t those with the most products.
To make money on a product we try to minimize output and maximize outcomes.

If your desired outcome is stakeholder satisfaction then all your investigation will focus on what makes them happy.

For most of you I can almost guarantee you don’t have metrics that’ll tell you how many times your last feature got used – whether it’s really generating value. But, you do know if your last project finished on time.

It’s no secret that the agile manifesto was written by 17 people who focused on building software. Reread the agile manifesto and all those values and principles. Notice how they’re written from the service provider’s perspective. Notice how customer, user, and the business are used almost interchangeably. Look at values like:
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Look at principles like: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software

This makes perfect sense if you’re building software for money

The biggest missing value statement in the agile manifesto is: Successful outcomes over efficient delivery

Doing agile by the book may result in you being a great service provider, but not a successful product creator.* (agile product development)

*There’s one simple thing you and your team can do right now to start breaking the habit:

Reflect on the outcome of everything you release.*

Focusing on product outcomes will shift you to a product mindset. Do this as a team and you’ll breathe life into product thinking in your organization.