Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework by Mik Kersten
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
| Project-Oriented Management | Product-Oriented Management | |
| Budgeting | Funding of milestones, predefined at project scoping. New budget requires creation of a new project. | Funding of product value streams based on business results. New budget allocation based on demand. Incentive to deliver incremental results |
| Time Frames | Term of the project (e.g., one year). Defined end date. Not focused on the maintenance/health after the project ends. | Life cycle of the product (multiple years), includes ongoing health/maintenance activities through end of life. |
| Success | Cost centre approach. Measured to be on time and on budget. Capitalisation of development results in large projects. Business incentive to ask for everything they might need up front. | Profit centre approach. Measured in business objectives and outcomes met (e.g., revenue). Focus on incremental value delivery and regular checkpoint. |
| Risk | Delivery risks, such as product/market fit, is maximised by forcing all learning, specification, and strategic decision making to occur up front. | Risk is spread across the time frame and iterations of the project. This creates option value, such as terminating the project if delivery assumptions were incorrect or pivoting if strategic opportunities arise. |
| Teams | Bring people to the work: allocated up front, people often span multiple projects, frequent churn and re-assignment. | Bring work to the people: stable, incrementally adjusted, cross-functional teams assigned to one value stream. |
| Prioritisation | PPM and project plan driven. Focus on requirements delivery. Projects drive waterfall orientation. | Road-map and hypothesis testing driven. Focus on feature and business value delivery. Products drive Agile orientation. |
| Visibility | IT is a black box. PMOs create complex mapping and obscurity. | Direct mapping to business outcomes, enabling transparency |
| Flow Metrics | Business Results |
| Velocity (items completed per time) Efficiency (touch time vs total time) Time (total time) Load (WIP) | Value Cost Quality Happiness |
Flows for:
Features
Defects
Risks
Debt/re-work