Lessons in Product Innovation

Challenges

• There are too many features in the product backlog and struggles to determine priorities.

• Product velocity per engineer varies widely.

• Code release quality is variable and unpredictable.

• Years of pushing new features with low utilization are contributing to tech debt.

• NPS scores are waning and NRR is below industry standards.

Assessment

The company realized that it needed objective third-party feedback on its product innovation life cycle and a refresh on the culture of product development. 

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1. Staff interviews: Identifying the existing gaps, process issues, and areas of concern.

2. Customer interviews: Gathered customers' perspectives on what was working well and not working well.

3. Process Review: Documenting what was believed to be the process and then what was actually happening and why.

Execution

Based on our assessment, we recommended and implemented the Jobs to be Done product development methodology.

1. Process Transformation: Keeping the current culture of development culture mind, we augmented the product development cycle with the JTBD methodology to bring coherence to the process while allowing for cultural norms to be integrated into the program.

2. Change Management/Habituation: We formed a cross-departmental leadership team led by an experienced JTBD expert empowered to hold the team accountable to the new process. As we ran existing product priorities through the process, all real-world exceptions to the process were handled as they arose and the process was refined and fortified as a group.

3. Shift in incentives: To align the process with behavior, all product and engineering compensation packages were shifted to encourage adherence to the process and outcomes.​

Results

Results & Beneficial Outcomes - Following the implementation of Jobs to be Done:

1. Code Velocity Increased: Code velocity increased 4x within six months and continues to be stable at this level after 2.5 years.

2. Code Quality Stable: The number of errors released into production remained stable even though code velocity increased. Further, with the implementation of more rapid release capabilities, the team was able to pull back bad releases in a matter of seconds instead of hours.

3. Increase in Customer Satisfaction: Feature releases had a measurable impact on customer satisfaction and feature adoption.

4. Reduction in Tech Debt: Since fewer but higher value features were being released to customers, engineers had more time to upgrade infrastructure and address tech debt giving the whole customer experience a performance boost.

5. Reduction in Support Tickets: Better features and improved tech debt resulted in fewer support tickets, faster response and resolution to the remaining tickets, and higher customer satisfaction scores (CSAT).

6. Improved Product Team Morale: Overall, the team felt more effective and attuned to customer needs resulting in improved team cohesion and job satifaction.

Lessons

1. Outside Change Agents - Sometimes you need someone outside the culture to change the culture. Everyone knew what they were doing wasn't working but they were stuck in their way of thinking. Bringing in a change agent from outside who had walked in their struggles brought a fresh perspective and a hope that it could be better.

   • Lesson - Find an external coach that the team can respect and who is empowered and supported by the leadership team to drive change. The leadership team needs the humility and wisdom to realize they are stuck in day-to-day priorities and need someone external to give the team a boost of change.

2. Don’t underestimate the power of culture - Culture doesn't change overnight. If you push it too hard or too fast, culture revolts and undermines all change like a virus.

   • Lesson - Plan a healthy observation period to understand the underlying reasons why the process is the way it is. The real nuggets lie not in the documented processes but in the quiet workarounds happening outside of the process. We learned that executive overrides, secret small team meetings, and individual client demands needed to be invited to openly have a place in the process to improve outcomes.

3. Group self-governance wins over processes - Process evolution starts the change but it is not a long-term agent of change. Again, everything begins and ends with culture. If you fail to change the culture, you have the wrong solution.

   • Lesson - You know when the external coach and the leadership team can step away when the team self-corrects itself. At some point, the process is a reference point and not the driver.