My mind wonders…

I’ve been very fortunate to work in a number of different areas of our organisation. Recently, I was given an opportunity to work with another department and business unit that deliver one of our biggest B2C sites.

In doing so I spoke on a regular basis with the business sponsor for the site reporting progress but also suggesting how they might deliver the site in the future.

In my conventional role, I work within a division that is focussed at delivering software to the other business units meaning that it is more B2B.

My role has been refocussed recently meaning that unfortunately I will no longer be able to work with people in the way that I have been but I wanted to offer my opinion on what I thought were some concepts that the area in question needed to understand to continue to develop.

I sent the following list to my boss and the director the other day with the intention of using them as points for conversation:

• Product vs. Project
• Breaking the shackles of the brand: Focusing on delivering features rather than the brand
• Amplifying learning = Removing the middle man = Aligning delivery teams with business units and business units with delivery teams
• Reducing Time To Live / Cost To Market / 80:20 rule
• Manufacturing vs. Engineering = Chemistry vs. Biology
• The long tail effect
• The wisdom of crowds / UGC.

A bit of a random list, I must confess, what I have realised in retrospect though is that the majority of the points above actually apply to the B2B area that I work in too.

I think in essence, what these points allude to is that, in my opinion, development teams exist to deliver value and that perhaps, some of the behaviour that I see when at work would suggest that we’ve lost sight of that.

I’ll use the next posts I make to elaborate on the points above, if for no other reason than to clarify things in my mind.