Technology Companies seeking Business Agility go through some steps of Transformation. But few see the expected change across the entire organization. Most often it would get limited to few engineering teams claiming to 'Go Agile' while rest of the organization is battling in their own world. Or, with a lot of fan-fare, due to Senior Executive push, initial change efforts yield some results, but tend to lose steam. In either cases, there is a high probability that Middle-Management is not on-boarded to believe in and drive the transformation at scale. Our hypothesis is that this layer of management is the most influential.

We propose a Growth Model for Middle-Management which not only addresses Personal Transformation but also will have the ability to drive change in the teams and across. One of the Model's core value is 'Managing Outside by Mastering Inside'. This is about Personal Development.

Another Core value of the Growth Model is Leading Others with Growth Mindset at the center as well as with a higher level of EQ. This leads to personal development of team members but also increases Manager Productivity.

Finally the Growth Model looks at Enhanced Customer Journey for Organizational Growth. 

The presentation motivates Agile Development teams for performing Lean Product Discovery enough upfront and then on a continuous basis in parallel to the Lean-Agile Development. Concepts are highlighted in a Case Study format using a Fictional product being built for a B2B / B2C application.

Case Study context: A medium sized business outside of India engaged with a medium sized development partner in India for development. The business wanted to create a Solution to facilitate payments from consumers to suit a specific segment in Retail e-commerce space. They outsourced the whole development to this development partner who specialized in developing Web applications. Requirements were conveyed over a couple of phone conferences between them where they explained several aspects of their business and their SW need. The development partner documented their understanding of the product and embarked on building the application.  

What was estimated as 8 weeks of effort, stretched to 24 weeks and all-round discontentment on both sides with no product in hand.

‘Lean Product Discovery’ intervention happens when both parties realized that the development is going nowhere. The first version of the product rolls out in 6 weeks.

Lean Product Discovery Concepts explored:

1. Customer centricity and defining Personas – clarity between Buyer & User
2. Stake-holder Alignment using a simple yet powerful Canvas Idea
3. Framing Hypothesis around Business & Customer Value
4. Prioritizing Value Delivery through Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
5. Project to Product thinking