A lot has changed in product delivery within a short period of time

• GPT accelerates

  ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and became the tech with the fastest adoption in history (up to that point). (Reuters)

• Automation is a top priority

  88% of respondents are currently piloting or using advanced automation solutions like low- and no-code or AI-based automation frameworks (n=315). (Sogeti)

• Large AI investments

  88% of CIOs have at least begun exploring what is possible with AI in 2024 (n=240). (Info-Tech Research Group)

• AI is the way of working

  92% of US-based programmers were reported as using AI coding tools both in and outside of work (n=500). (GitHub)

…product leaders need to know how to keep their products and practice relevant while maximizing opportunities and minimizing threats posed by exponentially emerging and maturing technologies.

Modern technologies are different from innovations in the past

The pace of technology change will continue to increase exponentially.

Triggered by advances in technology, significant global, social, and marketplace shifts pushed industries to transform how humans work and how organizations adapt. Mechanized farming in the form of wheeled tractors, industrial revolution, personal computers, and smart phones are just a few examples that shook the industry. While these past events serve as good reference points, the behavior and market of modern technology is different.

The difference is speed. Modern technologies, like AI, matures and grows exponentially faster than advancements in the past, and organizations do not have the luxury of time like they once had. Traditional product delivery practices and legacy technologies that served well before are no longer viable to sustain this accelerated pace of change and maintain IT’s role as technology leader. The chasm between the organization’s desire for harnessing technology and IT’s ability to deliver it will continue to widen.

Product teams must solve the problem of rapidly and exponentially increasing and evolving expectations and technologies.

Stakeholders Expect More From Your Product Practice

Your product practice needs to continue to support and enable its organization by fundamentally transforming the way it is operating in the following ways:

• Build an Adaptive Delivery Model: Enable more flexible and efficient delivery of products and services.
• Optimize & Autonomize Operations: Maximize efficiency while mitigating risks through intelligent automation and data-driven decision-making.
• Broker Strategic Relationships: Strengthen and build both external and internal relationships to better align IT capabilities to organizational goals.
• Embrace Digital Innovation: Evaluate and adopt solutions that drive consumer value, enterprise growth, and innovation.
• Cultivate Workforce Flexibility: Dismantle traditional jobs and hierarchies, normalize new collaborative ways of working, and adopt a federated and hybrid IT operating model.

To learn more, visit Info-Tech’s Develop an Exponential IT Roadmap.

Exponential IT involves a shift in the role product teams play

Exponential technologies enable greater empowerment, sophistication and intelligent capabilities in how the organization operates. Seeing the full benefit of these new capabilities requires your product practice to transform in the way it operates and thinks about technology.

Your Exponential IT product teams must be:

• Technology Thought Leaders and Innovators: Educate the organization of and experiment with leading edge technologies that drive measurable business value.
• Technology Enablers and Operators: Reliably and continuously empower, monitor, rationalize and maintain platforms, tools, and partners.
• Advisors, Mentors, and Coaches: Guide the successful adoption of technologies with good practices, principles, empathy, and trust.
• Change Delivery Collaborator: Facilitate sustainable and acceptable organizational changes with effective collaboration.
• Quality Champion: Coordinate and align product delivery to a common interpretation of quality and business value.

However, product teams struggle to play the role organizations expect them to

IT does not have the capacity to accommodate operational changes.

Organizations are not satisfied with their ability to obtain sufficient IT capacity to complete projects. The mean satisfaction score among respondents is 69%. (Source: CIO Business Vision, November 2022 to October 2023; n=355)

IT is getting better, but there is still room for improvement.

Respondents had a mean satisfaction score of 77% for IT’s ability to deliver effective work orders, and 73% for IT’s ability to deliver effective projects. (Source: CIO Business Vision, November 2022 to October 2023; n=355)

Many factors stand in the way of the team being successful

More is expected of your product teams because of exponential technologies and the organization’s growing reliance on applications, data, and other technologies. Stakeholders must invest in the alleviation of these delivery and management challenges to effectively deliver their priorities.

SOLUTION DELIVERY AND MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES

1. Attracting and retaining talent and leadership
2. Relying on legacy solutions
3. Resisting organizational change
4. Competing and conflicting strategic priorities
5. Being department focused, not value focused
6. Optimizing ill-equipped and unsupported teams

Visit Info-Tech’s Applications Priorities Report 2024 for more information on challenges teams are experiencing.

CIOs agree that at least some improvement is needed across key IT activities

(Source: CEO-CIO Alignment Diagnostics, November 2022 to October 2023, n=115)

Capture your Exponential IT journey with a strategy

Product must work with the business even if this relationship was strained or unimportant in the past. This collaboration helps your teams know what information they need from the business to successfully execute on its initiatives. Product leaders can then adopt the practices to better support the business’ strategic initiatives and significantly improve enterprise productivity and value with Exponential IT. An Exponential IT product practice strategy is an effective way to communicate your approach.

What makes a good strategy?

1. Incremental Value Delivery – You can generate and share measurable results throughout the Exponential IT journey. Value is not just created for the organization, but for individuals too.
2. Adaptable – You can review progress and revise priorities as conditions and needs change.
3. Achievable – Your product teams can execute the strategy and gain the expected outcomes.
4. Communication – You can communicate progress and achievements that reflect individual and team needs, not just for the company and its financials.

What Is an Exponential IT Product Practice Strategy?

• Looks for ways to transform the business and how your product teams delivers value with Exponential IT by identifying what technologies to embrace, what capabilities to optimize and automate, and what products and services to enhance.
• Unifies innovation and productivity possibilities with your desired end user, employee, and customer and brand experiences.
• Level sets achievable expectations by ensuring accountability lies with executive leadership and by consulting IT and business subject matter experts.
• Involves cross-functional participation from senior management from the different areas of the organization, including IT management and business representatives to gather strategic input.

Be an organizational leader with Exponential IT

Being a trusted operator is not enough to address the challenges and needs of modern IT environments. Product teams must be capable, enabled, and empowered to focus on business and technology innovation, unified digital experience, business alignment and engagement, and strategic planning to lead the organization with exponential technologies.

• Firefighter

  Product teams are effective in responding to and resolving urgent and critical incidents and issues that threaten the stability, security, and functionality of the organization.

• Trusted Operator

  Product teams are trusted by stakeholders to effectively deliver, operate, manage, and maintain critical products and services and ensure they are aligned to business priorities and driving efficiencies.

• Organizational Partner

  Product teams enable the transformation of business and service models and the creation of value through multiple digital channels.

• Organizational Leader

  Product teams accelerate value creation by embracing exponential technologies.

Start by being a trusted operator with strong product practice foundations

1. IT & Applications Strategy

   Your strategy details the direction, activities, and tactics for delivering on the promise of your product and solution portfolio.Visit Info-Tech’s Build an Application Department Strategy blueprint.

2. Sustainable Solution Delivery Practice

   Your solution delivery practice is the framework that holds your entire product lifecycle together into loops of continuous improvement. It allows your teams to optimize how they complete the phases and steps.Visit Info-Tech’s Evolve Your Software Development Lifecycle Into a Solution Delivery Lifecycle blueprint.

3. Solution Portfolio Management

   Solution portfolio management involves providing visibility into solutions across the organization, recommending corrections or enhancements to decision-makers, aligning delivery teams on business priorities, and showcasing the direction of solutions to stakeholders. Visit Info-Tech’s Rationalize Your Application Portfolio blueprint.

Then, become an organizational partner by extending your foundations with key enablers

• Practice Vision
  What do we want to achieve with Exponential IT?

  Illustrate the high priority outcomes, goals, drivers, and constraints of your product practice and align them to your strategic Exponential IT priorities with:
  • An Exponential IT roadmap
  • Executive leadership and support
  • Business value drivers, objectives, and metrics
  • Regulatory and industry standards
  • Guiding principles
  • Risk and change profile

• Product Delivery
  How do we distribute Exponential IT products?

  Extend and scale your product delivery function to accommodate and exploit continuous change from Exponential IT with these capabilities:
  • Product management
  • Multisource ecosystem
  • Change and risk management
  • Business relationship management
  • Business process management and automation
  • Intelligent, iterative, and collaborative solution delivery

• Product Portfolio
  What is the composition of my Exponential IT portfolio?

  Adopt a principle-based approach to the structure, composition, and design of your product portfolio by ensuring each product has and aligns to:
  • Product vision, roadmap, and ownership
  • Architecture principles
  • Quality standards
  • Digital experience

Be an organizational leader who innovates with exponential technologies

1. Deliver autonomously

   AI and ML become the rule, not the exception. IT manages a portfolio that is delivered via embedded and ubiquitous AI/ML functionality.

2. Creators, not coders

   Deliver organizational outcomes via natural language. IT embraces “platform as a product,” which uses natural language and low-code/no-code to enable AI/ML-driven capabilities and solutions.

3. IT as stakeholders, not order takers

   Embrace and evolve business relationship management (BRM) practices to elevate IT’s place at the table and become a true business partner. While IT will take on a different form, there will still be accountability for the technology that helps drive business capabilities. BRM practices will need to evolve and adapt in kind.

Deliver Capabilities, Not Applications

Visit Info-Tech’s Exponential IT for Applications blueprint.

Insight summary

Overarching insight

Much of the skills, processes, and technologies you put into place now are designed to solve current problems, not future ones. Apply your focus to the capabilities and technologies that embrace the Exponential IT future. In this future, product teams deliver solutions using intelligent and collaborative methods within a securely architected and adaptable ecosystem where continuous modernization is coupled with fluid partnerships.

Phase 1 insight

Your organization must be organized to continuously and immediately pivot, consuming and reflecting the shifts and transformations in the industry. Position your product practice and portfolio as organic where your technologies, processes, and resources are thoughtfully selected to embrace, not restrict, change. Focus on the problems you want to solve, outcomes you want to achieve, and the organization you want to be.

Phase 2 insight

Modern technologies are integral to business value delivery, but they will not retain their worth. They need to be delivered with the expectation that they can be replaced tomorrow. Build technology-agnostic product delivery teams. Strengthen your team’s collaborative and relationship-building skills, product-centric thinking, and flexible, automated, and intelligent delivery capabilities that are applicable to any exponential technologies.

Phase 3 insight

Sustainable and manageable exponential growth is more about guiding technology decisions than standardizing technologies. Adopt a principle-based approach to the building, rationalization, and management of your product portfolio. Prioritize the quality attributes and architecture principles that enable, empower and ease the implementation of change and take full advantage of exponential technologies like cloud and AI.

Phase 4 insight

Exponential IT motivates the iterative and continuous implementation and modernization of business tools and capabilities using early investments as foundations. Optimize your product practice and portfolio with the future in mind. Use the improvements and lessons learned from your successful implementation of Exponential IT to establish building blocks for scaling.

Info-Tech’s methodology for building your Exponential IT product practice

Measure success with the right metrics

Track metrics throughout your transformation to keep stakeholders informed.

As your Exponential IT product practice gains experiences and matures:

• You will have better-aligned product delivery and management capabilities with the broader organizational strategy.
• You will see greater confidence of stakeholders, customers, products teams, and other IT teams with the learning, experimentation, piloting, and implementation of exponential technologies and evolving strategic priorities.
• There will be improvements in solution delivery lead times including improved time-to-market or time-to-value benefits.
• You will have promoted and facilitated cross-functional collaboration cemented in transparency, humility, and knowledge sharing. Your product teams will be able to focus on high-impact or high-value initiatives, which maximizes their skills and experiences.