Many organizations are having trouble rolling out OKRs or objectives and key results, especially when top leaders overreach into the planning process using OKRs to bludgeon their favorite project or feature into the plan. Dr. Mik Kersten, Founder and CEO of Tasktop, talked at the recent DevOps Enterprise Summit about his seven years of experience using OKRs and what he's seen go right and wrong in large complex organizations. You can watch his full presentation here. I've now had eight years of … [Read more...]
Product Taxonomy: The Seven Domains of Transformation
Why Is Product Taxonomy Important? Shifting to a product operating model starts with defining the products, which includes both internally facing and externally facing products. Defining the products is essential to identifying clear lines of ownership and accountability, and redesigning the organizational structure to align with customer needs instead of settling for traditional organizations that align around IT functions. When looking across the fourteen companies interviewed, it became clear … [Read more...]
Transformation Implementation: Seven Domains of Transformation
This is part of our Seven Domains of Transformation series, which has been adapted from the Project to Product Transformation white paper by Ross Clanton, Amy Walters, Jason Zubrick, Pat Birkeland, Mik Kersten, Alan Nance, and Anders Wallgren. You can download and read the white paper in its entirety here. Why Is Transformation Implementation Important? Large-scale transformations in enterprises often fail because it can be difficult to successfully change the structure, ways of working, and … [Read more...]
The Seven Domains of Transformation
Implementing a digital transformation in any enterprise can be dramatic and daunting, but essential for continued success. In particular, moving from a project-based delivery model to a product-centric model can be a game changer. In this post, developed from the white paper The Project to Product Transformation, leaders can learn how to grasp the complexities and difficulties of implementing organizational change and digital transformation through seven key areas, or domains. These product … [Read more...]
Five Common Problems Organizations Face Today
This post is an excerpt from the Moving from Project to Product white paper by Ross Clanton, Carmen DeArdo, Mik Kersten, Alan Nance, Karen Person, and Jason Zubric. You can read the full white paper here. Business and IT leaders must take a proactive approach to understanding the negative internal forces that are interfering with their ability to react to disruptions. To help leaders understand the negative internal forces, this post outlines the five most common problems that … [Read more...]
Project to Product Transformation: How to Get Started
This post is an excerpt from the Moving from Project to Product white paper by Ross Clanton, Carmen DeArdo, Mik Kersten, Alan Nance, Karen Person, and Jason Zubric. You can read the full white paper here. In our previous blog we clarified what a product-based software delivery model is. In this post we provide some recommendations on how to get started on your project to product transformation, but it should be noted that this is not something where “one size fits all.” Every … [Read more...]
Advice on Helping Transform from Project to Product
A series of advice blogs from DevOps Enterprise Summit 2020 presenters. Moving from a project-centric to product-centric organization is on a lot of enterprises list. Continuing our series of advice blogs from DevOps Enterprise Summit 2020 presenters, we asked for advice on how to achieve this shift. What is your top advice to help an organization transform from a project to product approach? "First, there needs to be an understanding that project teams cannot compete against product … [Read more...]
The Turning Point
This post was adapted from Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework by Mik Kersten. For the majority of our careers, those of us involved with enterprise IT have been dealing with change at a frenzied pace. Technology platforms, software development methodologies, and the vendor landscape have been shifting at a rate that few organizations have been able to match. Those that manage to keep up, such as Amazon, and Alibaba, are … [Read more...]
The Three Epiphanies of Mik Kersten
Adapted from Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework by Mik Kersten. My career has been dedicated to understanding and improving how large-scale software is built. I spent nearly two decades working on new programming languages and software development tools, and have had a chance to work with some of the best technologists in the world. But I have come to realize that, due to where we are in the Turning Point, technology … [Read more...]
Guest Post: Project to Product, Software, and Safety: Getting in the Same Plane
Guest Post by Mik Kersten, author of Project to Product Project to Product tells a story of what we can learn about building software by walking down the BMW Group Leipzig plant production line. The other wonder of mass production that makes repeated appearances throughout the book is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which has long been an inspiration to me and whose silhouette graces the cover of Project to Product. Not only is it a marvel of engineering and beauty, it is a marvel of supply chain … [Read more...]
