As more of our clients have moved to agile software development, we’ve seen a growing need for business agility: getting non-engineering functions involved earlier and more collaboratively, so that companies deliver better revenue results as well as better software. Let’s make this more concrete by mapping it to the restaurant business.
Our first thoughts about restaurants are usually about the food. It’s important to remember, though, that restaurants are businesses first-and-foremost: if they don’t make money, they close their doors. A well-functioning restaurant profitably coordinates the chefs with its front-of-house staff and sales/marketing. Translating this to the software world, agile software development teams (engineering, QA, tech docs, tech ops) are our chefs: creating the most visible part of what we sell. As releases are passed to the customer-facing teams (marketing, sales, field SEs, channels, support), we need to be delivering fresh value to the market. Revenue happens when customers buy and use our solutions, not when we release them. Continue reading →
My last two posts were about getting into product management and the climb to Director. This third post asks how Vice Presidents of Product Management (VP PMs) are different from Directors, why they are so rare, and where else Directors can look for organizational advancement.