Focus on Organisational Capability
The organisation reflects on its goals and its ability to deliver on those goals. Are there sufficient stable and well-skilled teams to progress the work and deliver the goals that have been set? Is there a plan to deliver new skills required by new and upcoming technologies?
In A Nutshell
The organisation needs sufficient capability to deliver its goals now and in the future. Current capability needs are defined by the product portfolio, its priorities and technologies and agreed levels of service. Product teams measure their rate of delivery and quality of service to understand how well they are meeting their current goals. Mismatched goals and achievement may indicate a need to change the team’s capability.
Future capability needs are defined by the vision for new products and by changes in the existing portfolio. The technology view taken from all the Product Roadmaps shows how demand for skills will change and which new skills need to be introduced to the organisation.
Whether capacity and skills are acquired organically by training or by recruitment, changing the capability of the organisation takes significant time. Organisations must balance mid-term capability development with the potential need to pivot quickly. The organisation can increase its resilience by encouraging colleagues to become “t-shaped” - specialising-generalists, by building teams that are stable and integrated and by sharing knowledge of the wider product portfolio across teams.
Practices
Teams use service measures to understand whether the service they are providing to the customers meets the levels of service they have committed to. With sufficient history of data, we can begin to look at trends to see how quality of service is changing over time. The levels of service and trend information help the team to focus their attention on the improvements they need to make. We prioritise changes that will have the biggest impact on our Quality of Service.
The team uses measures of delivery in order to understand its current rate of delivery. After data has been gathered for some time, trend analysis may reveal how rate of delivery is changing over time. The rate of delivery and its trend help the team to understand whether and where they need to focus their attention in order to meet their own and stakeholders expectations.
The organisation must be, and must remain, fully capable of delivering its products and services to its customers. It must deliver the specific capabilities that its products and services demand. As the products and services evolve the needed capabilities will evolve. The Capability Roadmap describes the changing capabilities the organisation must deliver.
However carefully organisations plan their continued growth and development, there will always be the unanticipated, the sudden shocking change. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from such shocks. Organisations that can respond quickly and effectively will be the organisations that survive.
The Product Roadmap provides a simple view of how the product will grow towards its vision. As a forward looking view, the roadmap does not set fixed priorities or deadlines. Rather it is a fluid view that evolves as our understanding of customers’ needs evolves. Roadmaps are influenced by concerns in addition to the customers’ needs. These may include our capability and capacity to deliver change and the business, financial and legal context in which our product operates.