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Achieving Business Process Agility in Product Enterprises

An excerpt from the forthcoming book “Organizing and Managing Insanely Great Products” by David Fradin with RN Prasad

Every product enterprise, no matter what products and/or services they deliver to their markets, face one common business challenge – CHANGE.  The ambition of every product enterprise is to be flexible to meet the changing requirements and continue to make the business sustainable. Example of such changes include:

 

  • Shift in customer requirements and expectations from the product enterprise
  • Shift in economic conditions of the different geographies served by the product enterprise
  • Shift in technologies used to design, build and support the products/ services
  • Shift in the approaches to marketing products and supporting products
  • Shift in the innovation approach, IP creation, and shortening of cycle times
  • Shift in the method used to assess the market leadership (KPIs)
  • Shift in the way the talent mix of the product enterprise is changing in different geographies
  • Shift in the strategies needed to take-on competition in different markets

 

We use the term ‘Business Agility’ or ‘Agile Enterprise’ to describe such a product enterprise that is flexible to adjust itself to changing circumstances and retain its position in the market places they serve.  At the heart of every agile enterprise is its customers. The way they consume products and services is ever-changing. Just think about the way we purchased books before eBooks on Amazon Kindle.  

According to Business Agility Institute, there are three components of business agility:

 

  • Agile Leadership  – This represents the ability of the product enterprise to innovate the optimal strategy for their products & markets, quickly realign talent and that the team has a shared vision.
  • Agile Individuals – The key to be flexible is the talent within the product enterprise.  Individual team members demonstrating accountability, execution excellence, and growth mindsets enable the product enterprise to be agile.
  • Agile Operations – Business operations is the window through which consumers feel the user experience of working with the product enterprise.  The organization hierarchy, business processes, and partners together contribute to the agile operations. 

 

RELATED:  What a Product Manager Needs to Know About Information Security Roles and Responsibilities: Internal and for Their Product or Service

 

Thus, McKinsey describes business agility as the ability of an organization to renew itself, adapt, change quickly, and succeed in a rapidly changing, ambiguous, turbulent environment. According to Forbes business agility describes the nimbleness of a company; that is, the ability to adapt quickly while empowering everyone associated with the brand. 

 

Many market research companies describe the world we are in as VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.  Business agility provides the necessary shock absorber to be a successful product enterprise in a VUCA world. Agile enterprises sincerely adopt three laws of agility viz keeping team size small, organize these teams as a network and keep decision-making teams close to customers.  The common factors that product enterprises face will include global competition, disruptive innovations, pressure on margins, new market regulations, mergers & acquisitions, cyber threats and changing growth hacking strategies. According to the Economist survey, the pressure to bring down costs will be severe and the enterprise needs to make quick decisions and achieve high performance to manage the same.

 

Some of the critical characteristics of an agile product enterprise include:

 

  • Responding to change fast
  • Constantly listen to the voice of the customers
  • Organize teams around customer value produced by the product enterprise
  • Empower individuals and teams and align with enterprise business goals
  • Consider people as the source of innovation
  • Differentiate between outputs and outcomes
  • Fund the right projects that create customer value
  • Always continuously challenge the status quo
  • Always ready to take a calculated risk
  • Learn continuously through fact-based data analysis & effective decisions

 

RELATED:  Agile Product Market Strategy Boot Camp

Here is a table showing the business enterprise’s agility program focus areas and some actions that drive the transformation towards becoming an agile product enterprise.

 

Focus Area Agile Transformation Actions
Strategy
  • Shared vision
  • Flexible teams
  • Leveraging new opportunities
Structure
  • Network of communities
  • Empowered
  • Accountable
Process
  • Rapid experimentation
  • Continuous learning
  • Performance orientation
People
  • Entrepreneurial
  • Innovation culture
  • Collaboration  
Technology
  • Digital leadership (iSMAC)
  • Partnerships

 

David Fradin


David Fradin has trained thousands of managers throughout the world in the successful management of products. With over 47 years of experience across major companies, 75+ products and services and 11 startups, he infuses his workshops with insights gained as an expert product leader, product manager and product marketing manager at companies like Apple and HP. He was classically trained as an HP Product Manager and was then recruited by Apple to bring the first hard disk drive on a PC to market. As a result of his leadership and management skills, Apple promoted him first to Apple /// Group Product Manager and later Business Unit Manager at the same organizational level at that time as Steve Jobs. He recently authored “Building Insanely Great Products: Some Products Fail, Many Succeed…This is their Story” Lessons from 47 years of experience including Hewlett-Packard, Apple, 75 products, and 11 startups later. Go to: Amazon Store Coming soon will be "Organizing and Managing Insanely Great Products" and "Marketing Insanely Great Products." His workshops cover the founding values, vision, product lifecycle and management employed by Apple at its start and which it subscribes to today. You can learn more about his workshops at Spice Catalyst Workshops Soon to be released by Wiley and Sons, in the Early of 2017, is a seven-volume set of university-level textbooks entitled: "Foundations in the Management of Successful Products" covering keys to product success, product market strategy, marketing, soft skills, user experience, user interface, product engineering, and product support. What students will learn in the workshops, online courses and books are cover what has made Apple the most valuable company in the world today. Go to David Fradin @ Youcanbook to schedule a time to talk.

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