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.

Glossary terms highlight automatically as you read; hover any highlighted term and its definition pops up, so the lexicon and the argument stay matched. CONFIRM: glossary auto-highlight/hover still enabled on staging

Browse by topic

Six threads run through everything here.

Product Line StrategyProduct Lines as SystemsFlow & VelocityResponsive RoadmappingPortfolio ManagementCorporate Innovation

CONFIRM: category archive links / slugs

Latest

Recent posts.

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Product vs Product LineAdept-2019

Products and Product Lines: The Difference Matters

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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,…
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Jobs-to-be-Done Pioneers

Jobs-to-be-Done – What Pioneers Get Wrong

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“Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.” — Wyatt Earp The market for getting the JTBD job done is like the Wild West. There are gunslingers and sheriffs, pioneers and hustlers. This isn’t about good guys and bad guys. Everyone want’s…
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Fast Product Development

The Red Queen’s Race

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Winning the Red Queen's Race in New Product Development "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" - Lewis Carroll, Through…
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Agile Isn’t A Strategy

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But Smart Strategy Drives Speed and Agility. “Agile execution beats strategy.” It sounds good, but is it true? It is if you believe strategies are fixed and unresponsive to change. But it’s not true if you create the right strategy made…
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Innovation Charters In Motion

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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…
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Agile-Responsive-Roadmap

Agile and Strategy

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The Need for Responsive Roadmapping Agile implementations have a big problem. When they bump up against an organization’s culture, progress can stop. It turns out, behaviors and practices can be a brick wall.To me, it’s humorous to…
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Keep reading

Bring the systems view to your own line.

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