Product focused Software Development

The last 12 years I intensively worked with agile methods to being able to deliver software more predictable and to hit customer needs better. Just recently I had to recognize that agile is by no way enough to build products customers love. Together with the product managers, our UX people and the developers I am now on the way that Marty Cagan and his team skeched in their books "Inspired" and "Empowered". As a parallel step in our journey we now bring value to our customers faster using Continuous Delivery. This means a fundamental change in the way we develop software: automate almost everything, test-driven development, everybody is responsible, "done" means released,...We plan the next move, try if and if we fail we learn and try again. This is really an exciting path forward!

[Update May 2023] Our trip is an amazing experience. The team is more self-motivated than ever and increasingly willing to make responsible decisions. For us as leaders, finding our new role in a coaching mindset is sometimes challenging, but we are evolving step by step.The way we develop software has also changed dramatically. In order to be able to produce small increments, we now work trunk-based together with feature-flags. This together with 100% (yes!) test automation allows us to always be release-ready (although we haven't launched the product yet).I almost on a daily basis check our delivery, being curious what new piece of functionality are newly available.[Update January 2024] As planned, we are now starting our beta phase, in which real customers can test our software in their daily business. Our workflows – first discovering the problem space, then the solution space, then iteratively developing and delivering the solution – are now well established and are becoming increasingly sophisticated. However, we continue to reflect on what can be further optimized in our regular inspection and adjustment discussions. At the end of last year, feedback from users showed us that we had already achieved sufficient customer benefit for the product launch earlier than expected. Therefore, it was decided to plan the launch in mid-2024, half a year earlier than planned! Now the team has to change gears for the remaining time to bring the functionality we delivered to a product level: Instead of value creation by developing functionality, the focus is now on nonfunctional aspects of the software (e.g., resilience including backup & restore or scalability)So far, our new product-oriented development approach has exceeded my expectations in almost all respects. The team spirit and performance are great, and we are pleased to be able to tackle our first product launch in this setup.However, we are aware that the final hurdle still lies ahead: the only thing that really counts is the success of our product on the market! I'll keep you updated…

[Update September 2024] We actually did it. Beginning of July, we released the cloud software to the public! Now our product has to prove itself in the market. We on our side now have to deal with cloud ops (“you build it, you run it”) and have to find ways to iterate on the most value-containing product features. May be the real battles are just to come…

However, over the last two years we have tried out our new, contemporary approach to developing software products. We completely changed our understanding of software development from output to outcome oriented. The team transformed from a delivery- to an empowered product-organization. And finally, we have adapted our leadership style to make all this possible. This was so exciting and motivating – sometimes it felt like a rush and was a really great time for all the team.

My sincere thanks to everyone who has put their trust in us and supported us on this exciting journey.

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