Often startups or new product teams follow an inspiring leader, operating on ‘gut instinct’, assembling a scrappy product delivery team to rapidly get a new product or feature to market, hustling their way to success.

And scrappiness is fine in the initial stages, but it’s a temporary state as the goal of an organisation is to produce repeatable success, and not wait for the lottery. For this reason, I shared the product development framework, as its the lens that I have been using to express the transitions organisations or product teams move through as they approach maturity – as well as providing a framework for understanding where and how people can add value to product teams and organisations as they work towards their business / product goals.

Using the product development framework, we can understand how organisations typically mature, and highlight where efforts can be prioritised along the product execution journey. This will be an ongoing conversation in my writing as there is just so much material, thoughts, and observations. But first things first.

The product development framework extends the great work by Strategizer (Business Model Canvas), and Roman Pichler (Product Roadmap) to provide a framework for thinking about the broader context of which a product resides. The product framework considers:

What are the business or organisational necessities (Business Model Canvas)?

What are our product priorities, considered against the desired business outcomes (Product Roadmap)?

How will we deliver the required product features to achieve the goals set-out in the product roadmap (Product Execution)?

But this is just basically slicing an organisation vertically, encompassing everything from the business right down to your delivery team. So there’s far too much going on. So the goal here is really to help provide a framework to help people understand how and where to prioritise efforts. In product focused teams or organisations, how do you know what to focus on? Where are individual efforts best invested as the organisation or team seeks to bring new products or features into the world?

Prioritisation, or triage, is significantly important as you grow a business or build new products. Where you focus your attention will depend on the maturity of your organisation, or growth phase of your new venture. I work with people and organisations who constantly battle with this challenge of prioritisation, I would go as far as to say prioritisation is the single biggest challenge that people face, even outside of the organisation! Also, I say this from the perspective of a founder – when I founded my first company, I focused too much on product execution before I understood the business we were in. Or in other words, I failed at correctly prioritising my time towards the issues that were going to be really important.

So to look at this issue of prioritisation, let’s step through each layer of the product development framework, starting with the business model canvas.

As organisations grow, their strategic interests across each of the layers product development framework are going to change and evolve too. New ventures or product offerings should iterate more around the business model assumptions, as the team tests assumptions, iterating towards finding a customer segment and revenue. This is particularly evident when observing startups, but is just as applicable to new products being offered by established organisations. In fact, it can be even more important for the established organisation to recognise this – how often have we heard the stories where Corporation A releases a new product to the market only to realise no one actually wanted it? Startups on the other hand just can’t afford to do this, their business is very exposed so the successful ones take the time to make sure that they do understand the assumptions they are taking into the business, and iterate towards amazing their customers.

Once an organisation or product team gains confidence in their business assumptions, the strategic investments start to preference the product strategy (& roadmap). Here we see a team that has (at a minimum) confidence in their target customer segment, channel to market, and value proposition. The product roadmap is then used to articulate the product features that will

Deliver or enhance the value proposition;

Facilitate the channel to market; and/or

Deliver or enhance any supporting business functions (e.g. Revenue collection).

The last phase of maturity is a strategic interest in the execution of product – the how of the organisation. What was once a ‘scrappy hackathon’ of a startup, now has strong business acumen and processes for viewing the business world, a predictable and reliable product roadmap and supporting processes, and a mature product execution methodology that sees new product features delivered reliably. Improvements in product execution range from formalising delivery methodologies such as scrum-agile, and investments in infrastructure.

When I was writing this article, I found myself wrangling with how to best communicate what I see happening. The chart above is my best attempt at this. The chart presents the amount of investment over time that an organisation or product team directs towards each of the three product development framework areas of concern.

The blue, green and yellow circles represent the business model, product strategy and product execution respectively. And the size of the circle represents the maturity of each of these practices within an organisation.

This chart then illustrates that early on in a product team or organisations lifecycle there really isn’t a whole lot of maturity across any of the product framework concerns. As successful organisations or product teams execute, they iterate rapidly around the business model, learning processes to quickly identify their assumptions, and test these in the market. And over time, we see this investment transitioning into the product strategy, and then again into product execution.

I have found this framework an interesting one to use when trying to understand where I can add the most value. There’s not much value gained from helping a team around product execution if there’s no product strategy, and the founders have no idea about the business environment they are operating in. More recently, I feel like the conversations have moved towards product strategy. I find myself working with organisations and teams possessing great business leaders, and high capable technical teams – but lacking in product strategy product execution. This typically results in those working in product execution feeling as if everything is just ad-hoc and consequently loosing their connection to the organisation or team goals. And at times, the business wondering why the product delivery team is becoming disenfranchised.

I have noted some questions below that you might find useful to ask yourself if you’re in an evolving organisation or product team, and wondering how you could add value. Or similarly, if you work with these teams, these questions might help you evaluate where you can make recommendations that will bring about more effective product outcomes.

Business Model

Is there a firm understanding of the business environment and assumptions within the organisation or product team?

Is there recognition of the assumptions within the organisation or product team, and is there a process for testing these assumptions?

Product Strategy

Does the organisation have a product roadmap?

Is the product roadmap informed by the business model, and updated as assumptions are tested?

Product Execution

Is there a methodical approach to delivering the product roadmap features and goals?

Is there a process that facilitates the product execution teams input into the business model and product roadmap?

What do you think? Are you busy executing within a new venture or product team? Does any of this resonate with you? I’d love to hear from you – nick@thinkactlive.com or @byrnenick