The Adept Blog

Product lines, thought through in public.

Essays on managing product lines as systems — strategy, flow, velocity, and roadmapping — from Paul O’Connor and The Adept Group.

Systems thinkingManage the line, not one product.
Velocity & flowWhat actually ships, and how fast.
RoadmappingThe whole stack, across generations.

What you’ll find

The ideas behind the trilogy, worked out loud.

The blog is where the product-line system gets argued in the open — archetypes, platform-levers, decision flow, the tilting effect, verb-based segmentation, and outcome velocity.

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Browse by topic

Six threads run through everything here.

Product Line StrategyProduct Lines as SystemsFlow & VelocityResponsive RoadmappingPortfolio ManagementCorporate Innovation

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Latest

Recent posts.

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Roadmapping the Roadmap

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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…
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Product Line Facts

Facts about Product Line Strategy and Roadmaps

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Interested in Product Line Strategy and Roadmaps? Can you name a successful company without a powerful product line? What about a company that failed because a product line died? It’s easy to see the impact product lines have on business…
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Innovate Product Lines

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Go Beyond Single Product InnovationLook over a few articles on innovation. Are they about innovating one product at a time or whole product lines? This is important because a product line has far more impact in business than does a single…
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Portfolio Balance Failure

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I have a simple message for managers who oversee product development portfolios. Portfolio Balance is Misguided. The problem is no one knows what the balance must be. Instead, we make it up. That’s right, the gurus and experts make up numbers…
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Lexicon of Product Line Strategy

The Lexicon of Product Line Strategy

New Words and Business Knowledge Decades ago, most MBA curriculum followed the Harvard Business School approach. Each had a capstone course called Policy, taught in the classic Socratic method. Good professors fed students cases and then used…
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Innovation Charters

The Missing Linchpin to Product Line Strategy Most managers and executives know fast product development helps successful outcomes. There are two reasons for the push for speed. First, fast development is more efficient and less costly. And…
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Bring the systems view to your own line.

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