In my last post, Need to Succeed? Think Product, Not Project, I described the Product Mindset as a new and much better way of thinking about software development. It aligns business priorities to software success.
This introduction left a few readers wondering about how the mindset addresses specific industry issues, so let’s serve up some examples and see Product Mindset success in action:
Industry Issue: 41 percent failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI
Product Mindset: Remember, success is not about scope, schedule, and budget. It is measured by profit, market share, and reduced expenditure. By aligning with metrics that directly impact our clients’ business, Three Pillar remains in line with business objectives, even if they change! This means real ROI and business congruity. This flies in the face of traditional thinking, where predefined scope, schedule, and budgets are measured as an artificial success metric, but it’s impossible to argue with the results! Secondary success factors, such as time to market, user satisfaction, and cost of maintenance are leveraged as indicators of future success.
Industry Issue: 49 percent of all IT projects suffered budget overruns
Product Mindset: Three Pillar’s “virtual development centers” are built for sustainability and incremental funding. Rather than fixing scope and budget, both are allowed to evolve as value is delivered and returns realized. This mindset spurs the development team to prioritize features according to their monetized value; these same features are delivered early and often. In this business-aware environment, development teams start to pay for themselves almost immediately. Products quickly become self-funding and budgets are quickly replaced by P&Ls.
Industry Issue: 47 percent had higher-than-expected maintenance costs
Product Mindset: As products evolve, so do their teams. By maintaining a consistent yet elastic support team, product development minimizes the cost of maintenance by prioritizing maintenance activities into continued development. Three Pillar’s teams rely upon a long-term perspective, leveraging adaptive – simple yet elegant – frameworks, that provide a platform for maintainability, scalability, and rapid innovation. Teams focus on top quality from the start, realizing that user retention and minimized support costs fuel innovation and continued new feature development.