Agile Buy-in

Agilists blame backlashes against the methodology on top management’s unwillingness or inability to change. It’s leadership’s fault, not Agile’s. They didn’t embrace Lean-Agile Leadership. Really?

Verb-based Segmentation

Complementing Noun-based segmentation with Verb-based Segmentation enables teams to craft smart strategies and roadmaps for entire product lines. Verb-based segmentation is an enormously important and valuable approach that gets lost in the single-product JTBD enthusiasm that’s taken hold in nearly every company.

Unless a company has infinite resources, moving resources to the “back-end” undercuts the front-end. The resource shift then causes future problems in development, demanding more back-end work. This quagmire is a systems dilemma known as the tilting effect. And while a leading systems thinker…

There’s a major difference between product and product line thinking. And not knowing how to manage each differently is costing companies a lot of money. Do you know the difference between a product and a product line? I’m sure you do, but do you recognize that how you address the difference can make or break […]

Uniting Agile, Strategy, and Jobs-to-be-Done There’s a tug-a-war going on across three interrelated topics. Each drives superb product development. Yet the three topics act independently. The Approaches The Agile approach is found in every corner of product development. Its first mission was to uncover a new way to develop software successfully. But following its success, […]

Where is Roadmapping Taking Us? Roadmapping has been on quite a journey. Many managers use the term to describe planning and tracking projects. But they use different schemes to create roadmaps. And the results vary widely. There’s much to learn from roadmapping’s evolution. This is especially true for innovation management and product development in big […]

Platform-lever Mistakes

What’s not a Product-lever in Product Line Strategy When teaching product line strategy, I hear managers argue about what is and isn’t a platform-lever. To aid the discussion I offer two quick tests.  The first test is whether the factor in question can cut across cross multiple products. The second test is whether the factor […]

product line roadmap

How Product Line Roadmaps Differ From Product Roadmaps And Why You Need Both A product line roadmap is a timeline graphic that communicates how a team intends to carry out a product line strategy. It shows milestones and key relationships between strategy parts. At least one platform-lever[1] is central to most product line strategies. Teams […]

Adept Group

Innovation can drive business growth. It’s a key to every organization’s well-being. But many companies carry out innovation haphazardly. They’re more likely to count on serendipity, not strategic thinking, to drive gains from innovation. Unfortunately, management teams have little clarity on why, how, or when to advance product offerings. No wonder Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen […]

If you’re interested in NPD and R&D portfolio management, here is an important insight: Most Portfolio Management presentations discuss only development projects. They do not show, analyze, or rationalize front-end work. Anyone new to product development might assume Portfolio Management should only be about products under development. But if that’s all, then portfolio management misses its greatest opportunity for […]