Why Products, not Projects and How Delivery Managers Can Succeed under Project Constraints.

Avoid the project trap.

What's the issue with projects?

• Projects have end dates with neat little deadlines.

• Projects look great on a Gantt chart but give a false sense of predictability. 

• You have a roadmap of projects, each 3, 6 or even 12 months long.

On a Gantt chart, your team can move on, and your organisation acts that way, handing you your next project. So your team move on and miss out on valuable feedback.

The trouble with deadlines is that the work expands to fit the allotted time. So despite all the effort in the planning, you miss the deadline, and you're yet to realise any value from work. 

Often, with projects, a post-mortem is run as a singular event after an extensive scheme of change has been delivered (or not). The post-mortem is the first time anyone on the project looks at the project's impact. 

The work is broken up to be delivered by a deadline and not to realise a return on investment as soon as possible.

Even though the development team can deliver code quickly, releases are limited to specific release windows, defined by marketing spend and shareholder promises.

A better way: How you can deliver value despite the constraints of a project culture.

Working towards a theme and objectives beats working to a deadline. 

When you work towards an objective, you can break the work up into small bets, which give you an early indication of whether they have the desired outcome. 

Regular feedback and reflection on objectives enable you to course correct or wait for more data. 

If a piece of work moves things towards your goal, you can continue improving it, adding other features and optimising the experience. If it doesn't have the impact you want, you can switch to working on a different idea or run a different experiment. 

Conclusion

You can still work towards a deadline and show a better way of working:

• Review results regularly and have conversations on how to realise value as soon as possible.

• Use the feedback to help you plan and prioritise.

• Report feedback up and across the organisation, highlighting what you've learned and what opportunities you have found.