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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WHITEPAPER – Good Product Line Strategy Matters

Management teams know how technologies and markets are changing. Yet many still foundered. Could it happen to your company? I argue it could, no matter how strong the competitive advantage your company has built. Just think about Sony’s decades-long…
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Good Portfolio Management Includes Front-end Work

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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…
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The Misdirected Guidance of “Portfolio Balance”

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I have a simple message for everyone involved in product development. This message is especially important for PMOs. These are the manager’s responsible for analyzing project portfolios. They calculate resources and priorities to determine…
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Product Portfolio Management – Picking Flowers in the Dark

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Project prioritization is difficult. As a result, senior managers who govern portfolios often make things up as they go. Why not? Somebody must figure what’s more important and what’s not. It might as well be whoever is looking at the bubble…
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WHITEPAPER: Powerful Product Lines Strategies

A Framework for Deconstructing and Improving Product Lines StrategiesBusiness strategy is interesting. To many managers, business strategy seems monolithic. In reality, it wraps around many functional strategies.Supply chain management…
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Fighting Evil Complexity Costs

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Smart Product Line Strategies & RoadmapsAccounting can be as thrilling as getting teeth pulled. Cost accounting, however, is a skill product developers must get their arms around. This is the black art of calculating how much products…
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Bring the systems view to your own line.

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