The SVPG Product Operating Model
Transformed is essentially describing the Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) Product Operating Model. Even though, as they admit, they’re more extracting this than inventing it, the language and framing is theirs.
3 dimensions
- Product Delivery — How do we build?
- Empowered Product Teams — How do we solve problems?
- Product Leadership — How do we decide which problems to solve?
[JY: I’d rename this to these 3 pillars:
- Continuous Product Delivery
- Empowered Product Teams
- Product Tech Design Leadership]
[Continuous] Product Delivery
- Small, frequent, reliable “true” (aka user-facing) releases. At least every 2 weeks.
- Instrumentation so we can observe how features are actually used.
- Monitoring to detect problems before customers do (aka observability)
- Validate that capabilities provide value before scaling (aka “nail it before you scale it” aka staged rollout)
Empowered Product Teams
- Assigned “problems to solve” (aka a mission) rather than a list of features to do.
- Accountable for outcomes over outputs. [JY: See also Output → Outcomes → Impact: a logic model for product development]
- “Time-to-money” over “time-to-market” [JY: I prefer “time-to-impact” and/or “time-to-outcome” but I also like the directness of “time-to-money” in some cases]
- Responsible for product discovery (Rapid, cheap prototyping and testing ideas responsibly (aka “limit the blast radius”)), not just product delivery [JY: Think It Squad comes to mind]
- Outcome-based roadmaps
- Product Managers expected to understand customers, data, business, industry.
- Instead of “serve your stakeholders”, “serve our customers in ways that work for our business”
[JY: See also Team Topologies and My journey from “Agile” to “product teams”]
Product [, Tech, Design] Leadership
“Product Leadership” seems to be actually referring to the leaders of product, tech, and design. This could be directors+ across Product, Tech, Design or a general manager depending on how the organization is structured.
- Customer-centric product vision
- Insights-driven product strategy [JY: For example, DIBBs]
- Responsible for coaching, staffing, org design
- Product: value, viability, outcomes
- Design: usability, UX
- Tech: feasibility, delivery
[JY: Both the vision and strategy would include Tech and Design. I’ve previously seen this called TPD vision and strategy at Spotify.]
What’s missing for me
- Operating rhythm, especially across product domains (for example see Spotify Rhythm)
- Cross-domain Bets (for example see Thoughts on managing programs in “product-mode” (aka “tech”) companies)
Granted, these problems are really more about product operating model at scale.
