Navigating a Project to Product Shift

Strategies for Successful Transformation

Learn more about what it means to shift from a project-oriented to a product-oriented organization.

What does it mean to shift from a project-oriented to a product-oriented organization?

Shifting from a project-oriented to a product-oriented organization in Agile involves a fundamental change in how work is structured, managed, and delivered.

Here are some key aspects of this shift:

• Focus on Continuous Value Delivery: In a product-oriented organization, the emphasis is on continuously delivering value to customers rather than completing temporary projects. Teams work on a product from start to finish, making sure it stays useful and valuable with regular updates.

• Cross-Functional Teams: Teams in a product-oriented setup have members with various skills required for different stages of product development. These skills include design, development, testing, and deployment. Each team member contributes their expertise to ensure the successful completion of the product. This contrasts with project teams that may disband after completing their specific project.

• Customer-Centricity: Product-oriented organizations prioritize understanding and meeting customer needs over executing predefined projects. This involves continuous feedback loops, iterative development, and adapting products based on real-time customer insights.

• Long-term Ownership: Teams in product-oriented organizations often have long-term ownership of the products they develop. This ownership fosters accountability, innovation, and a deep understanding of the product’s market and user base.

• Iterative and Incremental Development: Agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban are commonly used in product-oriented organizations to facilitate iterative and incremental development. This approach allows for flexibility, faster response to change, and early delivery of valuable features.

• Outcome-Based Metrics: Instead of measuring success based on project completion (time, scope, budget), product-oriented organizations focus on outcome-based metrics such as customer satisfaction, product usage, and business impact. This shift encourages teams to align their efforts with broader organizational goals.

In The Video

We will help you make necessary changes, avoid common mistakes, and suggest steps to smoothly transition from project to product.

This will include:

• Lifecycles

• Budgeting

• Project to product management skills and organizational capabilities

• Power and authority shifts and changes needed for Lean Portfolio Management (LPM)

Meet Daniel Walsh

Daniel Walsh has dedicated his career to developing new products and services and bringing them to market. He is a passionate advocate for Lean, Agile, and system engineering methods.

His diverse background includes product development, sales, marketing, strategic planning and talent recruiting. Formerly with Intel Corp, Daniel graduated with an M.S. in Engineering Systems from MIT and an M.B.A. from the Sloan School of Business.

Daniel’s current areas of focus include organizational transformations and intrapreneurship, digital transformation, and complex adaptive systems.