Surprise! You're a Software Company

In last month’s Pollinator, we noted that SDG expects increased adoption of software product models and methods by companies and industries whose products aren’t software.

This might sound like a paradox.

But Pollinator readers are smart; we understand it. Throughout the economy, you’ll find companies that don’t directly sell software products but that still design, make, configure, or integrate software. Just this week I used a mobile app to change the temperature on my home thermostat from afar; I picked up coffee using a pretty sophisticated ordering, purchasing, and printed-label-for-the-cup software platform; and I scheduled a vet appointment for my dog using my vet’s online tools. And those are just daily B2C (business-to-consumer) uses; B2B (business-to-business) industries have many more sophisticated use cases.

In fact, pre-digital businesses are some of the most potential-rich tech businesses. If your business was born before business and consumer software was born (say, in the mid-20th Century or earlier), your opportunities for innovation might even be greater than the coolest tech startup’s.

A fun exercise for the pre-digital business: spend some time contemplating your core mission, your users, the way you deliver that mission to those users, and the differences between how you fulfilled your mission decades ago and how you would fulfill it differently if you started now.

Here’s an example: early in my product career I had a newfangled job title called an “online product manager” for a major American daily newspaper. This newspaper company had been around since the 1800s, long before software products were imagined by anyone. One day our digital team took a field trip to the impressive facility where the newspaper was printed, assembled, and readied for distribution each day. One of the more memorable sights: a train car that literally entered the building on rails, bearing giant rolls of newsprint. I remember thinking: if I were starting a business today that was designed to inform and bind a community with local, national, and world news, would I ever imagine thinking, “and of course to deliver on our mission, we will need to lay train tracks in our facilities”?

The challenge and the opportunity of any business is to iteratively reinvent how you fulfill your mission to your market, using the right mix of proven methods and new tech. If you can do that, you’re on the right track.

On to the Garden,

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Around the Garden

To think like a software company, start with your know-how

Check it out: You don’t have to be a software company to think like one, Vijay Gurbaxani, Harvard Business Review

This HBR piece from back in 2016 is a good introduction to digital product practices for the non-digital company. The writer, digital transformation expert and UC-Irvine business school professor Vijay Gurbaxani, suggests starting with what your company knows best:

I love that jaunty word know-how to describe your company’s domain of knowledge or field of mastery. Start with what your company knows how to do extraordinarily well, even if — especially if! — that domain isn’t technical or digital. That’s where digital opportunity lies. Then, once you’re clear about your know-how, find opportunities to smooth out impediments to customers’ experience within that know-how. You’ll almost inevitably discover that digital products are a great vehicle for improving experience, scaling operations, and generating new value.

Gurbaxani finishes his recommendations by outlining management practices and organizational structures for traditional businesses that are shifting to digital product models. If you squint, you can see agile development principles in here.

McKinsey’s analysis: digital product methods make companies more valuable

Check it out: The bottom-line benefit of the product operating model, Aditi Chawla, Martin Harrysson, Hannah Mayer, and Megha Sinha, McKinsey Digital

This recent analysis from McKinsey Digital is of course pretty McKinseyish. It is targeted to readers who spend their days worrying about value generated for shareholders, probably at publicly-traded firms. (“The top companies in terms of product and operating model maturity have 60 percent greater total returns to shareholders than bottom-half companies”). You won’t find much product-nerd talk on discovery methods or roadmap formats here.

But shareholder value is vital to every business, of course. So we should listen to McKinsey’s analysis, especially because their methods are thorough. The McKinsey Digital team scrutinized the operating models of 400 publicly-traded companies in industries far beyond technology. The upshot? Businesses who have adopted and matured a digital-product-like operating model are the most successful. And then McKinsey makes recommendations that any business can implement.

Our favorite recommendation: “Adopt modern product management and engineering practices.” Core to those practices are empowered product managers, with “accountability to deliver on business outcomes, all the way from idea to launch to scale. They conduct user research, develop user personas and as-is and to-be journeys, build a user-centric product road map, measure impact, and make data-driven decisions.” We love that description of product management for any industry.

And if you’re wondering how to apply this kind of product-driven model to your own business, well, SDG would love to help.

The best product development process article I’ll read all year (and it’s only February)

Check it out: The Continuous Product Improvement Cycle, Jeff Patton, Jeff Patton and Associates

Descriptions of processes can get ponderous. Before we get wrapped up in the minutiae of a product process, I think we should get clear about product principles: be curious, observe your users, respond to them with care, measure and learn, empower your people. A good process can grow out of good principles; I’m not sure the reverse is possible.

But man, oh man, this process description by product development legend Jeff Patton is excellent. It might be one of my favorite descriptions of effective product-making ever.

Here’s what I love about it:

1. It is universally applicable. Nearly any business, including those outside of tech, can see their own processes in here. As Patton says: "In this model I’m not proposing a new process or a new way of working. This is the way your organization currently works – even though it likely doesn’t use this language to talk about it. The question isn’t 'do you do this?', but 'how well do you do it?'"

2. It follows a rational sequence of sense, focus, discover, deliver, while recognizing that the cycle isn’t linear. Indeed, the model is inherently recursive. "This is not a linear flow. An organization and a product team will be working in all areas at the same time."

3. It puts the users and the products at the center, not the end. This is a good way to remind ourselves that a product is our response to our users' needs, and a product team's job is to understand the users in order to deliver the right response — that is, the right product.

4. It recognizes that software products are inherently and materially different than physical products. Digital experiences can be updated all the time. Understanding this is critical for traditional businesses (manufacturers, e.g.) adopting digital product models.

5. It's designed to help organizations evaluate and improve their practices. "Each area takes different types of thinking and practices to support it. Evaluating how strong you are in each area helps give you a starting point to improve the way you work."

6. The graphics! Patton’s illustrations are a bit messy — but so is product development. His arrows, loops, overlaps, and rough bits reflect the very process he describes.

I have a feeling I’ll be returning to Patton’s essay and sharing it with colleagues and customers for many years to come.

The false binary between software and manufacturing companies

Check it out: From Atoms to Pixels: Digital Product and Manufacturing, Jason Scherschligt, Solution Design Group

OK, this is a little embarrassing — but what the heck, since it’s the topic at hand, I’ll refer you to a piece that I myself wrote a few years ago for the Solution Design Group website, solutiondesign.com.

The money passage:

Here’s how manufacturing firms can get better at software product management:

• Start with the story of your customers.

• Introduce your manufacturing and software teams to each other.

• Focus on iterative discovery before concerning yourself with efficiency and scale.

• Understand where software and physical products differ.

• Consider new business models.

• Hire and organize staff with the specialized skillsets of software products.

• Manage your digital initiatives with product measurements.

• Adopt a product mindset for your software.

If you are a manufacturer who would like to discuss details or share your experiences, let me know. I think I can put you in touch with the guy who wrote this.

Even shoemakers need digital product

Check it out: “Creativity is the enemy.” Print advertisement for NikeCraft, by Nike. Retrieved from Esquire magazine.

We recently came across this print advertisement for a sneaker, of all things. It’s a shoe that was designed for the world’s biggest cobbler, Nike, by noted designer Tom Sachs. Forget about the shoe itself (though it’s pretty sweet); read the ad copy. It explains how Nike (or Mr. Sachs) thinks about designing footwear. Though shoes are the most quotidian of non-digital products, Product-heads and UX pros will see in this copy the unmistakable marks of an agile digital product design process.

• “Innovate incrementally.”

• “Study what came before.”

• “Use, observe, design, build, test, fail, repeat.”

• “True development is the practice of continuous refinement.”

That could have been written by Mind the Product or the SVPG. Product thinking is everywhere.

Outside the Box

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About The Pollinator

• The Pollinator is a free publication from the Product practice at Solution Design Group (SDG). Each issue is a curated digest of noteworthy content and articles from across the internet’s vast product community.

• Solution Design Group (SDG) is an employee-owned business and technology consulting company. From ideation to implementation, we help transform organizations through well-made and well-loved digital products. Utilizing our customer-centric approach, and our wide array of capabilities, we deliver innovative solutions that drive business growth and success for our customers.

• The Pollinator's editor is Jason Scherschligt, SDG's Head of Product. Please direct complaints, suggestions, and especially praise to Jason at [email protected].

• Why The Pollinator? Jason often says that as he works with leaders and teams across companies and industries, he feels like a honeybee in a garden, spending time on one flower, moving to another, collecting experiences and insights, and distributing them like pollen, so an entire garden blooms. How lovely.