Mr Data is our new boss

In my May post, I wrote about product management by dictate and the feature factory that this non-agile way of working results in. My conclusion was that in order to shut down the feature factory, we need to build a value-driven organization. Instead of believing that customer value is created by product management pushing features to the customers through the development organization, the role of product management shall be to define which effect all the hard work shall actually result in.

A number of things must have been put into place before transforming from the old feature factory into the brave new world of value-driven development:

• The organization must have articulated a clear and complete vision. Otherwise it will not be possible to break down the vision into clear missions and measurable goals, which is a prerequisite for the transformation. 
• It must be possible to deliver customer value continuously, at least once a sprint. And it must be easy to measure the impact of a delivery. Otherwise, the feedback loop from the customers will be severed.
• The organization must have a culture where it is safe to fail. The journey to becoming truly value-driven will mean a lot of experiments. Some of these experiments will fail, but failure is actually learning in disguise, as I wrote in a previous blog post. 

Classically, the four basic management skills are defined as to plan, organize, direct and control. I believe this is still valid, but with a twist: In management's new role, "directing" boils down to setting an organizational vision, together with team missions and effect goals. The "planning" and "organizing" parts of classic management are carried out by the teams. The "controlling" part is implemented through the build-measure-learn loop. This loop also continuously tweaks the "directing".

Therefore, in a value-driven organization, the team's bosses will be the mission and the data.

Since management will no longer need to plan, organize, direct or control the value-creation work, they will be able to grow into servant leaders - people with great skills in listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of others, and building community - based on the works of Robert K Greenleaf. This type of management will take the organization to a whole new level of success.

After the fall of the feature factory, gone will be the days when a product manager could push a big project through the organization and celebrate it as a huge success, even though it actually did not result in a huge increase in real customer value. Gone will also be the days of the old-style manager.

In a value-driven organization, we make sure that both people and product reach their fullest potential. Now that is something worth celebrating!