Episode 39 - Project Management vs. Product Management with Bill VanCuren
[00:01:16] Chris: We'd like to welcome you to this episode of Great Practices, and today we are talking about project management methodologies. Now, the longer that you've been a PMO leader or project manager, the more methodologies you've come across. Here's a quick walk down memory lane. Uh, Waterfall methodology showed up in the 70s, Six Sigma appeared in the early 90s, Kanban, DevOps, Scaled Agile Framework all surfaced in the early to mid 2010s, to name just a few of the 20 or so methodologies that have appeared over the past 50 years.
[00:01:52] Chris: Now, each one of these new methodologies comes with all the fervor and the excitement of it being the next [00:02:00] silver bullet that is going to solve everyone's IT, business, and PMO problems. , but over time, flaws and gaps start to appear with each of these novel methodologies, which necessitates the need for a new one. We take our learnings, our best practices from each one of these, and we make the next one better. So where are we now? What's the next shift that's knocking on our door?
[00:02:25] Chris: Well, that is the product centric operating model, and that's what we're going to be talking with Bill Van Curen, who is our guest today. Bill is an advisor, board member, and teacher, and brings with him 35 years of global and corporate IT management experience. His specialties include enterprise IT management, hybrid cloud implementation, and optimization of enterprise wide business processes to name just a few.
[00:02:54] Chris: And he's launching a new program called the Technology Leadership Playbook. And we're going to talk [00:03:00] more about that later. But one of the six modules as part of that playbook focuses on the difference between project Versus product management. So Bill, we're looking forward to our conversation today, and we'd like to welcome you to great practices.
[00:03:13] Bill: Glad to be here, Chris. Glad to share my experiences with the product centric model.
[00:03:18] Chris: before we get started, can you just tell us a little bit more about yourself and what it is that you do and what your history is?
[00:03:25] Bill: Yeah, you kind of discovered it. , you know, I spent, you know, close to 40 years in corporate IT, uh, most of those in leadership roles. , I was the CIO for 14 years for a public company, NCR Corporation, , the leading technology provider for point of sale, ATMs, , self checkout technologies. , and so what I'm here to talk about today is, you know, how I learned, you know, as the The enterprise corporate CIO to embrace some of the best practices, you know, within the company, we had product management, you know, obviously there were go to market products such as software and hardware, , that [00:04:00] that retailers and banks used and you've, you've touched as consumers, you've touched NCR technology multiple times per day, and then taking some of those best practices and injecting them into enterprise and corporate I.
[00:04:12] Bill: T. Particularly as it related to treating our business applications, the As products at the end of the day. , so yeah, so I've been retired from that role for about a year and a half. And, uh, in my semi retired life, I really enjoyed, you know, taking the repertoire of, of knowledge that I have cases and paying it forward to the next generation of it leaders and, and leading some exec ed, , programs for various CIO associations and, and tag, , and the specifically building out this leadership playbook.
[00:04:44] Bill: Taking things that aren't available in textbooks that I have, you know, my experience and and paying those forward as as real situational based leadership.
[00:04:53] Chris: Well, we are absolutely looking forward to that appreciate that wealth of knowledge that you're going to be bringing with you today. , so let's, [00:05:00] let's, let's go back and kind of look back from where we've come from. Can you just kind of spend, uh, maybe a couple minutes on, uh, the conventional PM methodologies such as waterfall and agile, you know, maybe a little bit, , pros and cons of each, what they are, where they fall short, that type of thing.
[00:05:16] Bill: I spent a lot of years, probably more years with waterfall and probably 5 to 8 years with agile before I retired from the role. It's hard to summarize them, but they all had a place in a time. Um, and that's still, those are still applicable today, given the nature of the project, or the nature of the initiative.
[00:05:38] Bill: Those best practices are still still there. Certainly agile, right? It's really taken root root as mainstream waterfall. , it gave us it gave us decision gates, right? Which, um, which added discipline to to our practice, right? The ability to have go, no, go decisions, you know, change of scope and dates each step along the way [00:06:00] would be, I think, the best positive, right?
[00:06:02] Bill: The disadvantages, you know, of waterfall was just the time and the frequency of management engagement. I would say was, was less.
[00:06:11] Bill: You know, you hand off requirements. It was almost treated like an internal supplier will hand them a set of requirements and will re engage when that. When that application is developed and we'll do some testing and then we'll say go or no go. So there's a, there was a big gap in time where we lacked engagement.
[00:06:28] Bill: Agile solved all that, right? So love Agile. Agile solved all that, um, right? More frequent engagement, vis a vis stand up, uh, interactions. Redefined roles like scrum masters. Those became very important and it allowed us to deliver quickly in the era of the, you know, the Internet and cloud, um, the innovation and tools that were there also allowed us to, uh, to deliver and collaborate on, you know, requirements and, um.
[00:06:59] Bill: You know, [00:07:00] cues of enhancements and work. So we've all been going towards more and more emerging of it and business, both with the tooling and the processes. So that we look like 1 team and not and not 2 teams. So it's it's been a great. It's been a great journey. We've really matured the practice of software engineering, development, deployment and engagement with the business.
[00:07:21] Bill: It's matured quite a bit over my tenure.
[00:07:24] Chris: And I like what you're saying, you know, I mean, you took the best, the best part of, you know, waterfall, which was like the discipline and the stage gates and that type of thing. And then that's kind of, you know, some of those principles and concepts, you know, they folded over into agile. What, what, what are some of the, what are some of the, the, the best practices that have come out of agile that you really appreciate that you think has made a difference?
[00:07:45] Bill: Well, more frequent involvement with the business, right? And seeing that the daily stand up call to give direction. Are we on track or not? The speed of releasing software, you know, going moving away from these [00:08:00] massive big bang implementations that are disruptive more towards, , smaller, more frequent code drops.
[00:08:06] Bill: Right. , you know, companies like, like Google and Yahoo, the early, the early companies who became digital, right, really, , really proved that that model could allow companies to accelerate, , and gain, , gain consumers and gain, gain market share by, by speed of deployment, , would, would be, I think the big takeaways that I had from it.
[00:08:28] Chris: And you mentioned that, like, maybe the shortcoming of Waterfall was it was, it was cumbersome and it was time consuming and it was large, right?
[00:08:36] Bill: And the primary output was documentation. I saw failed to fail to mention that the primary output of agile is software. The majority of the output of the waterfall is, is documentation, right? Requirements doc, F spec, test plans. You have a heavy, heavy documentation, which was built around lack of trust between business and IT.
[00:08:57] Bill: Again, back to, I feel like I need a contract [00:09:00] on exactly what IT is going to deliver. Whereas in Agile, the emphasis is on, um, working software, not documentation.
[00:09:08] Chris: Yeah, I like that. It's like, oh yeah, section 7. 3 sub bullet B, it said you were going to do this and you didn't do it. So, you know, that's wrong,
[00:09:17] Bill: Yeah, so give me a change request and I'll track it in my change control log. Um, and then, so there you go. It's a spin cycle, right? Whereas in Agile, you just, okay, I heard that in today's call. And tomorrow stand up, I'll show you working code that incorporates that change.
[00:09:31] Bill: Waterfall. Treats change as a bad thing. Agile treats change as a normal, , thing.
[00:09:38] Chris: Yeah, that's a great differentiator there. Now, what would you say, what would be some of the, maybe the weaknesses of Agile that you've seen that, you know, maybe, maybe it's fallen down in some areas?
[00:09:50] Bill: , well, it, I would say it doesn't apply to every project. , like I would say, you know, if you have a project for your, let's take a retailer and, and you're rolling out [00:10:00] POSA new POS system to multiple restaurants. That's a replicated sort of template. That's a, that's a standard, , PMO. Hey, here's, here's the standard project plan to, to bring up a site, a new restaurant.
[00:10:12] Bill: Uh, or let's say you're in the business of building call centers. Here's, here's the standard template for what to install at a call center to get it, get it connected to get the agents trained. Those repetitive site by site deployments. I think. Are more, , more conducive to, um, you know, a waterfall, a time, a time phased, , implementation.
[00:10:31] Bill: I would also say, , enterprise ERPs, right. You've got a large package, , to basically set up according to how you would work your end to end processes, , do the conference room pilots, you know, train, train the new roles in the company, typical ERP, whether it's, you know, financial sub ledgers or whether it's, you know, order management inventory.
[00:10:52] Bill: I think those. Those projects have a standard, , playbook, a standard project plan, whether you're using a big SI like [00:11:00] Accenture or Deloitte, or whether you're rolling your own, those, in my opinion, are not really conducive to agile because you're not going into the customized code. Now, if you have where, where I think the big difference is.
[00:11:11] Bill: If you're building products, either externally or internally, that have competitive advantage or your best practices for your, organization, Agile is the best because it is optimizing the speed at which you can make change and deploy and adapt. Right? So, yeah,
[00:11:31] Chris: and that's interesting because, I mean, just the very nature of what you said, Agile embraces change. So if there's a project, a program that doesn't have a lot of change, it's just not needed, you know, because it's just really not what it's, what it's set up
[00:11:45] Bill: Or you want to or you want to control if you want to guard against like if your project, let's say I'm implementing a new payroll or new general ledger, every company has it. It's not a differentiator for you in the market. Just adapt best practices and [00:12:00] use the no customizations allowed that that's not that's not a good fit for agile.
[00:12:05] Bill: Agile was going to be, you know, the fact you're engaging and changing and taking inputs implies you're going to change that product. So I, Agile fits really well for products that are under constant change. In my experience, pricing applications, right? Contract management applications, customer facing that are tied to the customer experience.
[00:12:27] Bill: Those are the ones that you are always changing and adapting based on customer and market feedback.
[00:12:33] Chris: Yeah, very interesting as far as that difference there and where they fit in. Now, what are, what are IT teams, business, what are they looking at next as far as this next model? And why are they looking to make a shift towards that now? What does that look like?
[00:12:49] Bill: Two words, platforms. Platforms. And subscription services, right? So there's a, there's a move towards platform based technology, you know, [00:13:00] moving from individual best of breed sort of products to, hey, let me adopt a platform. Right. .
[00:13:05] Bill: My platform for customer service might be service. Now, you know, says the SAS platform, right? Um, or my platform for, you know, e commerce or data analytics, right? I'm going to pick up, let's say, Snowflake or, or Microsoft, you know, Azure for data analytics. You're picking these, these platforms, right? And on those platforms are really capabilities.
[00:13:30] Bill: Or products, right? So then you can encapsulate a product family and tie that to the user experience, right? So let's say the user experience is just your commercial side of the business in terms of how you expose your product catalog, how you can price it, you can make a quote or take an order. That whole experience, you know, could sit on a platform.
[00:13:51] Bill: For example, it Salesforce or Adobe. So then you, you know, the drive here is really platform based, right? Um, capabilities, [00:14:00] right? Which are clearly cloud based as enabled. And then the business model that you're everybody's trying to move to is subscription based, right? Renewals, recurring revenue. It's easier to predict renew recurring revenue every year.
[00:14:13] Bill: Your stock, your shareholders appreciate. The confidence in a growing, , recurring revenue stream, as opposed to winning a new order every year, it's, it's more lumpy and choppy in terms of your confidence to predict your, your revenue and your, your profits. So companies are moving to a subscription model.
[00:14:30] Bill: Why? Because companies favor OpEx over CapEx, they don't want to buy big monolithic assets and put them on the balance sheet over four years anymore. They want to, they want to consume variably. Through a subscription model. Those are the two big drivers. I think platforms subscription business model.
[00:14:48] Chris: And is that, that's ultimately what you're saying is driving everybody toward that product centric model then, right? So, so how is that product centric model different than, you know, [00:15:00] what maybe we've been used to with Waterfall and with Agile? Like what is the, what's the difference that this is bringing to the table now?
[00:15:06] Bill: Well, the fundamental difference is, um, the product lives, right? The product has genealogy. It grows. It has a road map and the product is aligned to your business capabilities and your business outcomes. A project is finite. It begins and ends.
[00:15:27] Chris: Yep. Yep.
[00:15:28] Bill: is, this is, this is going to sound like I'm preaching agile because I think agile is an enabler to product, but a project team is conceived.
[00:15:37] Bill: They start, they follow waterfall. And then when the project's over, they disband and go to another project. Well, that's the worst thing you can do for productivity and learning curve is right when the project team gets to be their optimal productivity. We disbanded. Whereas in product, a team is assigned to, the product team, right, has some of the IT software engineering roles in it, but it also has business roles [00:16:00] such as product owners, right, um, analysts that define roadmaps, study the market for competitive capabilities.
[00:16:08] Bill: So that lives on. You've heard the old adage, software is never done. Software is never done. It evolves. It evolves. So why not productize it instead of treating it like a project that does end?
[00:16:20] Chris: Yeah. And that's, that is a great point. It's just like, that team is at their prime by the time they get to the end of a project. And then like you're saying, okay, well, let's just break everybody up and put them over here and put them over here when they are at their absolute best, you know, in all of the, the experience they've gained and the mistakes they've made and what they've learned from that.
[00:16:37] Chris: And then it's like, oh, let's disband them. So this product centric model just keeps that group of people together the entire time.
[00:16:44] Bill: One more thing it does, it assigns ownership more so with the business, where in the project model, you tend to have an IT PM leader by default becomes becomes the owner of the project, right? So they get beat up, particularly if there's multiple areas of the [00:17:00] business that want their changes prioritized, the project manager can't really win this situation.
[00:17:05] Bill: Right? In our company, it was order management. Received requirements from like four or five different business owners. So we said, Hey, we can solve this by getting a business owner for order management. We've just picked, picked ahead of order accounting, right? It's the best fit. They own order management and they help prioritize those requirements and they own the roadmap in the business.
[00:17:24] Bill: And then it is more, , setting themselves up to enable and engineer that outcome, but not become the owner of the business product.
[00:17:33] Chris: And that's part of the problem. Like when you go back to the waterfall methodology, which is like why it's like, , Oh, here's a contract. Here's an agreement between us because we don't trust each other. You know, now you you're, you're on the same team and you're on the same group. And now that trust, you know, that trust is hopefully implicit into that team right there.
[00:17:51] Chris: So let's say then let's talk about how can we make this work in the real world? So let's say that I am a PMO I want to introduce this product [00:18:00] management idea to my organization. This is going to be a new concept to, you know, my stakeholders. Where would I even begin to do that? And what's the process to get there to introduce this model?
[00:18:11] Bill: well, , it depends on what type of company you're in. Okay. So let me just back up and say, I had the fortune of being in a technology company. So, inside the company, people spoke the language of product management. Right? So, if you're in a company already has a product management function, you know, you start there, your allies.
[00:18:27] Bill: Okay. Yeah. You might want to mirror what they do and then internalize that to your, your corporate it or your business applications, right? So you got to start somewhere. We need to build. We need to build advocacy. , so probably the person that's on this call that that gets the religion to say, I want to do this, um, has to help evangelize it.
[00:18:48] Bill: Right. Um, have to go sell, sell the idea. And I would say, like anything we would say, start small, pick, pick, pick an application in your company that seems to have the most [00:19:00] change or the most conflict around the direction or the competing requirements to choose, choose that. That's, that's where it's really going to show, um, its advantages.
[00:19:10] Bill: Now, maybe you don't, maybe you don't pick the worst one at first, but pick one, one of those, like, uh, applications that has, you know, multiple Multiple business units, trying to prioritize where it's going. Right. And then and then work with the business to establish who who should be product owner. Now, maybe it starts as a committee of those, um, those 3 or 4, and then it evolves to, you know, 1 person that committee take takes on ownership for the business, um, unit.
[00:19:37] Bill: Roadmap and direction. Now you also have to, IT has to be prepared to change. I would say again, probably third time on this call, , probably already need to be agile. I don't, I don't think this works. So, well, probably could work with waterfall for that product, but it's better with agile because you already have the concept of, you know, the actual development team, they, they kind of start to take on attributes of the product team. [00:20:00] And they're gonna stay with that product now in infinity or until that product is, is, um, TWI lighted. Um, so yeah, I would start small evangelize to the business and be prepared to change the, the it , roles, assign business roles like product owner, , continue the agile roles that you already have, right?
[00:20:21] Bill: The release train engineers and the Scrum masters, those continue software engineers. Those continue but they become part of, , a product team. And then lastly. Is, uh, look at all the metrics you're creating for the traditional waterfall method and be prepared to kind of give, give them up over time. Some of them, you have a lot of metrics around time, cost, quality, deep, deep metrics and analytics.
[00:20:43] Bill: You're going to move now towards business outcome metrics, user user metrics, such as adoption, right? How, how many, um, how many frequent interactions you have with the products you're moving more towards a customer measure of usage of the product and you're moving [00:21:00] away from those myopic measures that are micromanaging the phase gates of delivery.
[00:21:05] Bill: Does that make sense?
[00:21:06] Chris: It makes perfect sense, because what you're moving away from is if something was on time, on budget, in scope, if it's not realizing the business result, right? Which is, you know, people are using it and is it useful? Is it used? Is it usable?
[00:21:21] Bill: Yeah, and I'm not saying throw them all out the window. I think, you know, you kind of lean that out, you know, you know, the lean principles of eliminating waste, you know, you still want to stay within budget and deliver to to a target time frame, but I think if you look at that process has been going on for many, many years, you'll find a lot of wasteful non value added metrics.
[00:21:39] Bill: And I would lean out, you know, significant percentage. Why? Because we have to free up the people's time to work on the new, the new method. Okay. Right. Which is gathering capabilities, building roadmaps in conjunction with the business and doing more frequent, um, enhancements and, and, you know, moving again, conducive with agile.
[00:21:57] Bill: I think,
[00:21:57] Chris: Yeah. And it's, it's like, what is the business outcome, [00:22:00] right? What is the ROI on this product? Um, that it's, that it's being able to generate for the company. So makes, makes perfect sense. And I loved your, I loved your idea about if you are in a product based company, go hang out with those, with those leaders and those, those product managers, and just kind of pick their brain about what is that process?
[00:22:18] Chris: What does that look like? Cause it is going to be a different mindset.
[00:22:21] Bill: you know, I think you still have portfolio management, right? I still think you have a portfolio of products, at the highest level. I'm not saying throw away portfolio management, but I'm, I'm saying project management shifts to product.
[00:22:33] Chris: Yep. And just keeping that team together and, uh, optimizing them over the long run. Now, how long does a shift like this typically take to make? And what are some of the obstacles that you've seen in the way there?
[00:22:45] Bill: Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, in my experience, I Um, we could take, we probably took an entire business area, like, , let's say, uh, from, from opportunity to order, right. So that, you know, these [00:23:00] mega processes from the, you know, having the opportunities, , leads, , quoting pricing, and then getting to, to an order that could move into fulfillment that process.
[00:23:11] Bill: That's probably three years. But to take just one of those products, like if you take the quoting engine or the pricing, one of those individual products, it may take a year. Again, I'm talking about a worldwide, you know, I'm talking about a global company, public company, smaller, you could probably move faster if you have smaller, , smaller business entities, fewer business entities.
[00:23:30] Bill: We had a lot of business entities. So I think you could go, you could go faster. Maybe I'm giving you worse case on, on the time horizon. But again, I said, start small and then eventually take an entire value stream. And I'm just using the customer facing value stream because I think it has the most, it has the most need to be moving very nimbly with, with the market and with the feedback of customers.
[00:23:53] Chris: And to your point, that's it. You know, just, just start small, like you're saying, pick the ones that are, that are problematic, but not [00:24:00] unachievable. Right. Or just, you know, insurmountable, but, but it could be kind of a quick win, right? Just say, look, this concept works. This is a big difference. Look at the outcome and let's, let's do this again and again, rinse and repeat.
[00:24:11] Bill: yeah. Take, take an entire area. Another area might be customer services, you know, where your incident management and your knowledge base and your online problem solving, you know, all that. There's a lot of chatbots that live in that space. That'd be another big area where you could, you could start just start with incident management.
[00:24:26] Bill: A big company has 15 different incident tracking systems and issue management systems work on finding the product owner, you know, in the business for that is also the process owner for services, and then they'll work with you to, you know, product simplification is a natural outcome of this, you go from 10 issue tracking systems down to one or two.
[00:24:46] Bill: , and then that's getting rid of the waste and the redundancy. And now you're team can be more effective because they're only working on one application instead of 10 different ones.
[00:24:54] Chris: Yeah, what a, what, what a cost savings that is, right? I mean, just across the board there. So, Bill, what, [00:25:00] um, what mistakes have you seen people make then when it comes to implementing this, this product centric methodology?
[00:25:07] Bill: Well, again, if if I T is the evangelist and and the business is not following you, you know, you'll have some false starts there. I know we did the business might initially it might be skeptical thinking you're trying to push more work on them. But once they see that they now have more control over the outcome.
[00:25:26] Bill: And, uh, their their timelines for delivery, , they're going to embrace it. So we had, we saw a dramatic shift. Initially, there was skepticism, you know, getting them to sign up to be product owners, , and helping own the road map. That was an additional, you know, thing that they thought it should be doing that.
[00:25:41] Bill: Well, we're here to facilitate, right? Provide the structure. So, you know, you can literally draw it for you, but you got to, you got to own it. You got to be the decision maker. So there'll be, there'll be skepticism there as well as the, I think you would ever come this an agile that, you know, if you get them to come, the business tends to daily standup call to help give [00:26:00] direction.
[00:26:00] Bill: That's more than half the battle. So the frequency of engagement is more right, but the waste is reduced. Right. And the time to market is increased. So you have, you have to sell that. Um, and then the it team, they're going to be skeptical, right? If you've been a project manager, your whole career, you've got all these PMI certifications.
[00:26:20] Bill: They're all great. By the way, there's a good disciplines to have, and now your world's disrupted. And you're like, okay, , take your pick. Would you like to be a release train engineer? Would you like to be a product manager? Because we're going to reduce, you know, let's say your PMO has, you know, 10 project managers, and we're going to reduce it to two or three.
[00:26:37] Bill: , and then the rest of you, we're going to offer opportunities to take these other roles. Right in the agile model or in the product model, right? We need we need product managers and we need people that can help with product definition. We need help with defining capabilities instead of writing requirements documents.
[00:26:53] Bill: We're going to, we're going to build these capabilities and feed them into the agile Jira funnel that those kind of roles are [00:27:00] going to change. And then we're going to change anyway with agile. It's just now you've got a structural top of that with product.
[00:27:05] Chris: So it sounds like there has to be. There has to be some good explanation and a clear, really just kind of a clear understanding of where we're going and explaining it to everybody. Because like you're saying, if it is doing it on their own, it's not going to work. All the changes that are going to be coming from an IT perspective with the roles that can make people very nervous and anxious through all of this.
[00:27:27] Chris: , you know, the fact that you said that it's going to take more time for business to be involved, but they're going to benefit long term, you know, it's, it is, it, it is a fundamental shift. So I could see where there's these little speed bumps along the way that you're just going to need to make sure that those are addressed, you know,
[00:27:40] Bill: And the business is already, they're already acknowledging they're the process owner, right? I have a process owner for pricing or process owner for services. You go to them and say, we want to respect your process center role. And furthermore, we want you to be the product owner for the pricing application or the service incident application.
[00:27:57] Bill: That, that's how you, that's how you kind of sell it. , that [00:28:00] it's part and partial of what they're already doing.
[00:28:02] Chris: makes perfect sense. So Bill, if our listeners walked away today with like one great practice from today's episode, uh, what would it be? What would you zero in on that they should, um, they should be able to understand?
[00:28:15] Bill: Well, it's the practice of product management applied to business applications.
[00:28:21] Chris: That's short and sweet. That's it. We'll leave it there. . , there is something that you've been working on lately that will also be able to help people transition from, you know, perhaps agile or waterfall over to this new product, , this product methodology.
[00:28:36] Chris: Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and what you've been working on there?
[00:28:40] Bill: Yeah, as I mentioned at the introduction, , I'm, I'm working on some executive ed curriculums for, um, not only for CIOs, but for, uh, direct reports to CIOs. You know, some of that is professional development, like, , executive presence and leading innovation, culture change. , some of us more disciplines, like we're [00:29:00] talking about today.
[00:29:01] Bill: , so I have, I packaged up 6 key topics into. , a technology program that has a certificate. And I pick things that are not, they're not by the way, a hundred percent not AI generated. This is my, this is my genuine content based on my 40 year career in it, and 15 as as a CIO.
[00:29:19] Bill: So it's, it's original content I've developed. To your point, I'm, I'm going to, , enhance it with, , case studies. There's a lot out there on the internet. So I've spent a lot of time collating and picking specific cases , , and then this is a lunch and learn series. , so it's easy to digest. We can do it during the lunch hour, 90 minutes.
[00:29:39] Bill: , that includes little breakouts that includes a lecture from me, , sharing content, fee reads before the session, and then dialogue during the session, you know, debating a case or a topic or two. , and so it's, these are discrete chunks. You can take all six or you can just pick one. So if you were just interested in a [00:30:00] project to product.
[00:30:01] Bill: Transformation, um, that that course will be held on October 9th, , noon, Eastern time. It's a lunch and learn. So, if you're interested in that, , , it's under tag ed online, TAG ed online.org. , slash tlp TLP is the acronym for Technology Leadership Playbook.
[00:30:23] Bill: , and then within that you can register for all six or any one of the, the topics. As I said October 9th, we'll be, , addressing this topic in greater detail. With more research, more casework and specific templates on how to implement product management within your organization.
[00:30:39] Chris: Perfect. Well, we will absolutely, uh, we'll include that link in the show notes. And for those that'll be interested, you know, you'd be able to click on that and register and see what else you got to offer there.
[00:30:48] Bill: Very good.
[00:30:49] Chris: , I thought it was funny, Bill. You had to say it was non AI generated. It's like, that's a disclaimer now,
[00:30:54] Bill: Well, I just thought of that yesterday that, um, I'm I believe it's going to be important for those of [00:31:00] us who are in this business of sort of, you know, advising and, you know, sharing content. I've got a lot of content that I build over the years and I'm so far. I've, I resisted using a, I think definitely has its place.
[00:31:12] Bill: You can generate volumes of readable content just by going out to AI. But I think I'm going to differentiate by saying I'm using my own content. It's might be raw. My example is going to be real. Uh, my opinion is going to be mine. No AI so far. Yeah.
[00:31:29] Chris: Love it. , so let's say, in addition to the course, what's the best way for people to contact you? If they'd like to discuss this further,
[00:31:35] Bill: LinkedIn. So I have a LinkedIn, it's my name. You'll see it there. Uh, Bill Van Curren and LinkedIn. You can connect with me and it, and I have a website launch from LinkedIn that will take, and I have blogs. I actually just published a blog on this topic last week. I also have a website. It's a BVC advisors, LLC.
[00:31:55] Bill: com. BVC advisors. Plural [00:32:00] LLC. com and that's the same link you would hit if you went to my LinkedIn.
[00:32:04] Chris: All right. Excellent. And we'll put all that in the show notes as well. And thank you very much, , Bill for being on today. We appreciate this. We appreciate this insight and we will look forward to talking to you soon.
[00:32:14] Bill: Have a great day.
[00:32:15] Chris: Thanks, Bill.
[00:32:17] Chris: Well, that was another great episode of Great Practices, and we certainly do appreciate Bill joining us today. Uh, what were some of the great practices and insights that came from this episode? Well, we took a little bit of a walk down memory lane talking about the pros and cons of Waterfall and Agile.
[00:32:36] Chris: Uh, with Waterfall, having some of the pros of having decision gates and being able to clearly, , track the change of scope and dates. Uh, what were some of the But some of the disadvantages were the time and frequency of management or stakeholder involvement and that big gap between when the project started and when you actually saw working software because the main emphasis of waterfall is really about [00:33:00] documentation.
[00:33:01] Chris: Well, Bill then talked about the fact that Agile solved all of that by having more frequent engagement with management and stakeholders by means of stand ups, , redefined roles, and then it allowed software to be delivered quickly, and the emphasis was on delivering working software. Well, that's all well and good with agile, but the next model that's coming up seems to be even better.
[00:33:27] Chris: Uh, because the next model is based on the fact that companies are moving more towards platforms and subscriptions. So moving away from that individual best of breed product, but now it's like, let us adopt a platform, bring that into our organization and then build upon that. So this next model is really bringing in that product centric way of looking at project management and of looking at developing software within organizations.
[00:33:57] Chris: That's also tied in nicely to the new [00:34:00] business model, which is more of that subscription focus, which is about recurring revenue. You know, he said get rid of that lumpy and choppy revenue stream by moving over to that subscription model, focusing more on OPEX over CAPEX and then consuming that over time variably instead of in these big chunks then.
[00:34:21] Chris: This is where that product centric methodology comes into play. So how is that different than Waterfall or Agile? Well, I like the point that he brought out that the product centric methodology, the product lives, it has a genealogy, it grows, and its roadmap is tied to business outcomes.
[00:34:45] Chris: So this is an ongoing, living, breathing thing within the organization compared to a project, which is finite, has a beginning, has an end. Uh, and the irony of that is just as the team is [00:35:00] at their best, their optimum, they've been through everything together. They've figured it all out. Once that project is over, that team is disbanded and starts over again.
[00:35:09] Chris: That's not the way it is with the product methodology, uh, which is just an ongoing team of, , I. T. and business roles that support that product through its lifecycle. So how can this be implemented in? The real world. Well, he gave us some real good insight into that area as well. Talked about if you have a product management function in your company already,
[00:35:33] Chris: go ahead and find out what they're doing. Mirror what they do. Spend some time with them. Pick their brains on what their best practices are. Great practices are. , you're going to need to build advocacy and then help evangelize this new model because it's going to be a different way of doing things.
[00:35:49] Chris: It's going to be perhaps threatening to some people. People are going to have questions about it, but if you can be out there being an advocate and an evangelist for that, then it's going to make it that much easier to adopt. [00:36:00] I like the fact that he said, go ahead and start small, , find an application with maybe the most change in conflict and competing requirements.
[00:36:11] Chris: Maybe not the absolute worst one, right? But the one that has multiple business units that are using it or vying for it, or have requirements that are needed for this product. And then begin this product methodology model with that particular application and see where it goes. And then it's really getting into that rinse and repeat model.
[00:36:32] Chris: If it works there or when it works there, you know, go ahead and apply that to other applications in order to make this work, you also talked about the fact that we need to start measuring different things and it has to be prepared to make that change as well. , yeah, it's important to know the cost and scope and budget and time and schedule and all that type of information and all those KPIs, , But also we need to start moving more towards business outcome [00:37:00] metrics.
[00:37:00] Chris: Is the product delivering that ROI that is expected? Are the customers engaging with that product? Are they getting the use out of it? Is that product useful, usable, and used? That's really the metrics that you want to focus on. That's going to help show, , the fact that this new model is working and that it is bringing impacts to the business.
[00:37:22] Chris: Some of the mistakes that he's mentioned, that if it is just IT that is serving as the evangelist and not business engaged with that as well, you're going to face some false starts. Uh, you're going to not be able to get this through to fruition out of the gate, but you may have a start, stop, start, stop.
[00:37:41] Chris: So you want to make sure that you're partnering with the business side of things. , business. They may be more skeptical saying, Oh, you're pushing more work our way now that we've got to, you know, be this product owner on this side of things. Well, the way that you work around that is really showing them that they've got more control, , in [00:38:00] the deliverables and the outcomes and the timelines when it comes to what it is that they want to have delivered.
[00:38:07] Chris: And he also talked about the fact that the I. T. Team will probably be skeptical here. We've got all the project managers with their P. M. I. Certifications and other credentials, which are still important. It's still good. But now we're talking about turning them into product managers or release train engineers, so we need to make sure that we're managing that process as well so that they continue to realize that they have a place in the organization and within that new model.
[00:38:37] Chris: So those are just a couple of the great practices that I picked out of today's episode and we'd like to thank Bill for being on today. And do you have a great practice that you'd like to share? If so, go to the PMO leader. com. Click on explore great practices podcast and fill out the form at the bottom of the screen.
[00:38:56] Chris: Someone will get in touch with you shortly. Also, be [00:39:00] sure not to miss a single episode by subscribing to Great Practices on your favorite podcast platform. And if you like what you hear, we've had some great guests on. Be sure to share this with your manager, colleagues,
[00:39:12] Chris: and any others you think would benefit. Thanks again for listening to this episode and keep putting Great Practices into practice.
