Technology organizations are making the move to small, empowered, product-oriented teams. These teams have fewer members who each bring broader capabilities across the full technology stack. The shift to product-aligned delivery has significant implications for IT organizational design, job family architecture and the culture of the workforce.
Product-aligned delivery can mean many things, but, at its most basic, this delivery model places the focus of the business – and the go-to-market products of the business – on the customer experience. Whether their products are physical, logical or digital, companies are paying more attention to how those products are consumed by customers in the marketplace than on how the company carries out its business. A shift to a vertical, product-aligned approach also can impact the enterprise’s organizational design and culture. The shift for a company’s workers from a functional- or skill-based organization to a product-based organization typically requires a massive culture change.
Developing and maintaining digitally enabled products often requires additional adjustments to an IT organization, including the flexibility to embrace a proliferation of new technologies and constantly changing technology skills. An IT organization moving away from a well-established hierarchical structure and job family architecture and toward these norms will likely undergo dramatic change.
The ISG white paper Maximizing Customer Centricity: Designing and Structuring IT Organizations for Product-Aligned Delivery explores how companies can encourage their technology workers to adopt a product-oriented mindset and embrace the cultural changes it requires.
About the author
Ola is an IT transformational thought leader with over 25 years of leadership experience within various industries helping enterprises make transformation change. She is a seasoned professional with expertise in emerging delivery models that contemplate the rapidly changing technology landscape. She has advised corporations in the opportunities related to emerging technologies, and is fluent in Enterprise Agility, DevOps, cloud, and automation. Ola leads ISG's Enterprise Agility practice in the Americas.
About the author
Ola Chowning
Ola is an IT transformational thought leader with over 25 years of leadership experience within various industries helping enterprises make transformation change. She is a seasoned professional with expertise in emerging delivery models that contemplate the rapidly changing technology landscape. She has advised corporations in the opportunities related to emerging technologies, and is fluent in Enterprise Agility, DevOps, cloud, and automation.
