March 13, 2025 • 33 mins
In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West chats with Accenture’s Professional Scrum Trainer Dimitris Dimitrelos about how companies and organizations introduce the Agile Product Operating Model (APOM). They explore the shift from project-based to product-based approaches, how APOM integrates business and product development, and the challenges of aligning legacy structures with new ways of working. Dimitris highlights the need for strong C-level sponsorship and cross-functional transformation teams to drive success. Tune in to learn how organizations are navigating this transformation to achieve true business agility.
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Lindsay Velecina (00:00):
Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community
(00:04):
podcast, a podcast from the homeof Scrum. In this podcast, we
feature professional scrumtrainers and other scrum
practitioners sharing theirstories and experiences to help
learn from the experience ofothers. We hope you enjoy this
episode. Hello
Dave West (00:20):
and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast. I'm
your host. Dave West CEO,here@scrum.org today's podcast
is actually something I'm reallyexcited about. We're fortunate
to have with us a professionalscrum trainer, Demetrius
demetres. I'm really excited tohave him join us, because he's
going to be talking to us abouthis experience of introducing
(00:43):
the Agile product operatingmodel. For the people that have
listened to this podcast before,or maybe you've been to
scrum.org, website, you've seenthat I'm really interested in
how organizations can move froma project based approach to a
product based approach, and whatdoes that really mean to them?
(01:04):
Demetrius has been doing someamazing things about introducing
products with his work atAccenture. So so I'm really
excited to have him at thepodcast today. Welcome
Demetrius.
Dimitris Dimitrelos (01:17):
Hello.
Hello, Dave. Thanks for havingme. It's really great to be
here, and it's also a reallynice subject that we're going to
discuss about tonight.
Dave West (01:26):
I think it's really, really interesting, the whole
topic of product thinking. Imean, it keeps me up at night.
It is so interesting because howdo organizations move from an
industrial mindset of projects,of allocating resources, of
managing these flows, tosomething about delivering value
(01:48):
to customers in a sort ofpackage sense. So, so I'm, I'm
glad you could spend the time.
Where are you joining us? FromDemetrius?
Dimitris Dimitrelos (01:56):
I'm joining from Martins, Greece,
Dave West (01:59):
Greece. Well, that's awesome, you know, sort of like
the place that civilizationbegan. So I guess it's very APO
then, really, to be talkingabout the next wave of change.
Maybe I'm playing this up alittle too much, I don't know,
right? So let's, let's, let'sstart at the beginning. That's a
very good place to begin. Toquote Julie Andrews, a palm
(02:24):
agile product operating model,or, you know, this move to
product thinking. What does itwhat does it mean to you?
Dimitris Dimitrelos (02:31):
So let me start by saying that in my mind,
product thinking is in the corefacility, in a sense, it's it's
the soul of agility. So I'm sureyou will agree with me that the
need for agility is there, andit's bigger than ever. So the
(02:55):
external environment, the marketdynamics, customer behaviors,
are changing faster than ever.
Crisis come and go and anincreasing rate. That means
companies, organizations, theyneed to adapt in a faster and
faster rate. So the need foragility is there, even though
the world agile might not be ashot as it used to be, right, but
(03:17):
the need for agility is there.
And a lot of organization, a lotof organizations, companies,
they focus on agile from thetechnology point of view. They
started doing agile in in it andin digital mainly the technology
(03:42):
department. So now it's like therest of the organization, the
business of the organization,the product part of the
organization is is joining thiswave. So the a bomb, the Agile
product operating model is astructured way to try to
(04:04):
organize the company around theproduct, around the value,
usually in Accenture. Ourcustomers call us to help them
transition in this way we haveto typical, typically. They want
to change organizationstructure, create new processes,
(04:28):
identify new skillscapabilities, create new talent
pools. They want to evaluate thetechnology. They want to change
the culture. So all these thingsare part of a major change
initiatives that APM requires.
Dave West (04:49):
It is interesting.
You said that you know this isbusiness driven, because one
thing that you know, agileobviously started in software
development and. My boss, KenSchwaber and and others were
working in these software teamsand realizing that traditional
project management approacheswere stifling the way in which
this technology, or technologywas being used. So became this
(05:12):
way of working, which then, youknow, transformed a lot of
technology organizations. So itstarted there. Then we had a few
years of business agility,right? And people were talking
about business and the like. Butwhat I saw, and I don't know if
you saw the same religious wasthis, they were taking the ideas
(05:34):
that were being practiced insoftware, but they weren't
changing the unit of consumptionthat they were basically taking
their existing projectmanagement operational systems
and saying, let's do some agilestuff on that, you know, build a
backlog and and manage, youknow, self organized teams that
aren't that self organized, butwe'll pretend they are. You
(05:56):
know, use user stories, JIRATrello, whatever the Kanban
boards make things, and it didhave some improvement, but
without the paradigm of aproduct and this universal sort
of container organizations weresort of floundering with
business agility, even with theSpotify model and all the all
(06:18):
the lie is that, and is thatwhat you saw, is that, what you
observed, as well asorganizations wrestled with
business agility,
Dimitris Dimitrelos (06:30):
absolutely, business agility means much more
than creating some Scrum teamswithin the business department.
Yeah, it's much more than that.
It's a much more brave move.
It's a much more structural movearound the organization, and
(06:51):
it's a very good sign that wesee that we are called from the
business side. Business has theinitiative on a pump
introduction and apon adoption.
And this time, technology isaround them is with them. So
it's not, you know, it's not nowinitiatives that are that begin
(07:16):
from digital as they used to,they begin from it, and then
they have to bring businessalong. Now business starts the
journey. Business starts tochange, and technology follows.
And this is just one of thedifferences that we see.
Dave West (07:40):
So let's explore those differences a little bit
more. So the number one is, thisis a business initiative, where
Agile transformationstraditionally have been a
technology initiative, right? Sothat's the you know. That's the
number one. What? What? Whatother you know differences do
you see Demetrius. The second
Dimitris Dimitrelos (08:00):
one is the definition of success. So if you
start from technology, thensuccess is smooth delivery,
right? But now it's not aboutdelivery. It's not only about
delivery anymore. It's aboutproduct success. And one thing
you could say here is thatproduct success also include
product operations, right?
Business Operations are in themix. So it's not only about new
(08:24):
projects, you know, getting morestuff, more features, out of the
door. It's also really having animpact on the market. So that
means creating feedback loopsabout what you're building. Do
you measure what you'rebuilding? Do you measure the
impact of what you're building,what your developer on your
(08:45):
customer behaviors? Are yougetting value for the money you
spend? And also, how do youintegrate the business operation
with the project, the productdevelopment. So you create a new
product, how do you market it?
(09:06):
How do you create campaignsaround how do you support it
with your customer base? Allthese things are creating value
from the product, and it's nowone thing. It's not, you know, a
wall between delivery projectsand business operations.
Dave West (09:26):
I just want to lean into that for a moment, because
I think what's reallyinteresting from the
conversations I've had withorganizations who are on this
journey, the one thing that itbecomes very apparent is this
holistic way of looking at valuethrough the lens of a product
highlights the fact that theirorganizations are not
(09:50):
necessarily structuredconsistently across a value
stream, meaning you've goteither a lot of people in. In in
one part, and not a lot in theother meaning, people that are
developing new products, gettingit out is really hard, and
you've already got too manyproducts that these operational
(10:11):
groups are supporting, or youhave operations that that are
too busy focused on thechallenges with the existing
products that they can't they'vegot no room, or, you know,
you've got all sorts ofdifferent sort of problems that
this makes very, very apparent,which can be very challenging
for an organization because theyactually now are looking at, you
(10:35):
know, the examples are on thetechnology side. Things like
technical debt are veryapparent. Now you know that that
business debt is very apparent,meaning, you know, that's sort
of like putting things off,having manual processes that
should be automated as they adda new product they break, or,
you know, these sort of things.
Do you see that as well, thatthis holistic sort of
(10:58):
perspective is a little scary,and and
Dimitris Dimitrelos (11:03):
the way this is, this is translated into
change, is that we're buildingthe product development, the
business operations people, notonly within the same
organizational structure as suchas a tribe or another release
train or whatever You may callit, but also within the same
team, so you have businessoperations and product
(11:25):
development people within thesame small, cross functional
team, so they interact. And whenthe product, while the product
is developed, then everybodythinks on how we will support
and market it and bring it tothe customers. Yeah? So it's a
really, yeah, holistic, holisticview. And basically, I believe
(11:49):
it's one of the big values. It'sone of the biggest values that
this model brings the holisticview brings people together,
much less politics, a lot a lotof better alignment and a lot of
less escalations. So I there's afunny story. I remember when we
(12:15):
introduced product, operatingmodel in a large organization,
and after a few months, we did abig retrospective with all the
stakeholders, and the CEO joinedus, who was not, we had his
sponsorship, but he was not veryactively involved in the day to
day. And when he came hiscomment was, well, something is
(12:39):
very good, something is verywrong, because I don't get any
escalations, no more. Sotypically, you know, people from
business and technology, theywill fight, and they will come
to me for resolution, yeah, forescalation. So I don't do that
anymore. So either you'reworking very well, or you're
putting everything under thecarpet, and I should be worried.
(12:59):
So that was his comment, andthat's the biggest win. Yeah,
that's
Dave West (13:03):
yeah. So simplicity, I mean, from my experience,
coming from the softwareindustry, which historically has
been very focused on productsand built around products, you
know that keeping it reallysimple, it was always sort of
ironic. When I was developingproducts, you'd go into these
banks who, you know, have very,you know, they have financial
(13:27):
products and 1000s of people andloads and loads of money. And
actually, you know, a lovelycanteen where, you know, in my
company, we didn't actually havea canteen. You had to go to
Subway, down the round the roundthe block anyway. And you'd go
in, and the level of complexity,there was 1000s of people. It
looked like orchestrating all ofthese different bits to get and
(13:50):
I'm like, Why? Why don't youjust align around these
products? Are like, well, whatare the products? And I was
like, Well, we start with thecustomer. Understand your
existing systems, understandwhere you where your value is,
and start there and work yourway out. But we could never
really do that. So what haschanged is it, is it technology
(14:12):
has driven these organizationsto the businesses to really
realize, is it that there's awhole new group of business
leaders that are more technologyoriented, that suddenly realize
that their biggest opportunityis with the application of
technology to solve theircustomers problems. What's
(14:34):
changed? Demetrius,
Dimitris Dimitrelos (14:36):
well, it's not it's not as simple as it
looks. Please remember that thein the in the last decade, a lot
of organizations have beenfocusing on on digital on the
digital transformation, right?
Yeah, and that means that a lotof of energy went into that
department. So a lot. Of agilewent into that, that area as
(15:01):
well. So a lot of Agiletransformation, agile teams were
around digital departments anddigital transformation. But if
you think about it, digital sothey shop or the portal of
organization that is used tointeract with customers is not a
product per se, right? It's onlya channel. So you have to think
(15:23):
more holistically and and nowthat organizations are
organizing around product, meansthat you have to transform this
previous organizational agilestructures that were around
digital and now wrap them aroundyour real product structure. If
(15:47):
you're a bank, it may be yourcards business or your your loan
business or your, you know,savings business, that is the
real product, and this is wherewe see customers are organizing
their organizations around,yeah,
Dave West (16:08):
the that when you see people have a mobile product
team, you think to yourself,well, that I understand it's a
competency. I understand thatthere are some things that are
unique about mobile in terms ofthe technology, but I and maybe
there's some opportunities fordoing things differently with
your customer. So I get thathowever that should be, you
(16:31):
know, the that should besprinkled into if your bank
loans, private checking, orwhatever, those you know, and it
becomes this capability that allof your products can take
advantage of. And yes, maybeyou've got a community of
practice around it, or, or somesort of, you know, I guess it
(16:52):
would be so, you know, some sortof competency in that. But, but
that, you know, driving thatacross all of the products that
deliver money, mobile doesn'tmake you any money, your
checking account, does yourloans, do your brokerage, your,
you know, whatever lifeinsurance, whatever the things
are. So I think, I think that isa big, big change that
(17:15):
organizations are wrestlingwith. And so let's talk a little
bit about challenges, you know,so from what I see, just to sort
of go on from that is existingsystems, legacy systems, which
are both an opportunity becauseit means that people are using
stuff and, you know, generatingmoney and value, but it's also
an absolute nightmare, becauseyou're now trying to break those
(17:38):
systems And the organizationalconstructs that are associated
with them into a product culturewould that is that the biggest
challenge Dimitris or otherother challenges,
Dimitris Dimitrelos (17:49):
this is one big challenge that's very true,
but with all these years ofother transformations, we have
now developed some practices,some methods to help us overcome
this. So you may call themchapters. You may call them
communities of practice, andother methods and practices that
(18:15):
will help you overcome this, thedivision of work between
different organizational unitsthat actually work on the same
legacy systems. But there arealso other challenges. Please,
don't forget, this is a majorchange initiative, and the way
(18:38):
that your product is yourproduct is structured may not
align with your currentorganizational structure, so
that means changes may beneeded, and this is always
difficult in organization. Thisis always this always requires
(19:03):
strong C level sponsorship,strong CEO sponsorship. So this
is what we do, yes. So this iswhat Accenture does. We help
them. We help customers. Is thechange with major change
initiative, we have experiencewith other organizations, and we
(19:25):
have different ways of engagingthat have to do with the
specific customer. For example,there are customers that tell us
we want a lot ofprescriptiveness. We want
something that you have done inother similar clients in other
countries, and it works. So wewant you to bring us a model
(19:50):
that will work more or less. Andthere are other customers that
start from a blank sheet ofpaper, and they. Go, Okay, let's
design it from scratch and letlet's make this our own. We are
ready to invest time in this andmake it our own. Do you think
(20:12):
that the biggest
Dave West (20:13):
reason why, and this is sort of more of a
philosophical question, perhaps,and stop me if I'm getting too
sort of deep. But for myobservation, the biggest
challenge that I see aroundadopting these kind of models is
status, power, authority, thesevery human things. For instance,
(20:35):
I was interviewing a largefinancial institution when I was
researching product definition.
So I was basically, I met peoplethat were working in product
model in this company, and Isaid, How did your products get
defined? And, you know, I wasexpecting to hear, you know,
value streams, legacy systems,data, I don't know, these
(20:56):
things, and all of those thingswere discussed, but, but then
one guy said to me, he goes, Doyou know really how they were? I
was like, goes, who we said,basically, it's almost an
indication of power structuresin the existing organization. He
goes, who we were scared ofmoving. I was like, what? And,
(21:16):
and it was, it was just sort ofironic that the cute, because
people build these, like therewas one product that, I mean, he
was speaking to us candidly,with me, said it's much bigger,
and we invest a lot more in itthan we really should. But the
reason why we do that is, yes,it's important, but the reason
(21:37):
why we do that is because theguy that runs it, everybody's
kind of, they don't want to dealwith him. So what we do is we
basically, when we transitionthe product, he was an
application system and somedata, and we just sort of, like,
put a ring fence around that andsay, well, we're not going to
change that. We're just going tocall it a product. And and he
(21:57):
goes, he says, honestly, is thatthe right thing to do? I don't
know. Does it cause some issues?
Definitely around dependencies,definitely around empowerment,
definitely around value, likethere's lot more value could be
delivered in other products ifwe really broke it up. But he
(22:19):
goes, but honestly, in terms ofmy life's a lot easier because,
because we haven't messed withthat, because I'll take that.
And I thought that was quiteinteresting. Do you do you see
that sometimes? Or, you
Dimitris Dimitrelos (22:32):
know, you know, Dave, it's not so wrong.
Let me explain myself. Oh,interesting. There are people
that the organization reallyneeds. There are very important
C level executives that theorganization, that have been
with organization for a longtime. They're really important.
(22:54):
They drive this organization,not only on sea level, but on
various levels. Yeah, you wantthese people. You don't want to
just bring a ready made model,and some people just, you know,
they don't fill in some someposition. So let's get rid of
(23:14):
them. Doesn't work like that.
You need these people. So whatyou do, what we have seen,
organizations successfully do isthat they let these people
transform their role to fit intointo the new structure, into the
new organization. And we haveseen people evolve. We have seen
(23:34):
technologies become excellentbusiness sponsors and excellent
business owners. And we haveseen people that were project
managers become excellentproduct managers, because
Product Manager productownership, is another major
(23:55):
change we're seeing in thisorganization, product is a very
good is a very good example ofwhat an opportunity in an
organization that is switchingto a product operating model may
look like. So up to now, productmanager, product management was
more like a function in themarketing department, in the
(24:20):
product department, which wasnot so involved in in delivery.
It was not so involved inproduct creation. It was more
like an operational, let's saycommunication role. Now, this
role is pivotal. Now, this isthe general of the product. So
the product manager now reallyowns the product in the in the
(24:45):
scrum, Product Owner sense theycontrol delivery. They control
product business operations. Sothey are really the sense of. Is
what an end to end owner of aproduct may look like. So I
(25:06):
believe this is this can happenin various levels of the
organizations. People cantransform their roles, but you
always start with the people. Itmakes sense.
Dave West (25:23):
That's an interesting perspective, and maybe yeah, and
one that I think we all need tobe a little bit more conscious
of, that this isn't a architect.
We often think of this in termsof an architectural problem that
needs solving. Organizing. Howdo we organize support products?
What products do we have? Youknow, what are the dependencies
(25:43):
between those products? How dowe build the systems and the
processes? And we forget? Ithink that ultimately, an
organization is just the sum ofthe people that make that
organization up, the ideas, thethoughts, the experiences, you
know, the problems that they'veseen in the past will help
shape, you know, solve theproblems that they see in the
future. And I think we do forgetthat, right? So we try to keep
(26:06):
these, these conversationsshort. And I know you and I
could talk about this all dayand and I'd learn so much from
you. So if you were juststarting this journey, if you're
sitting there, and maybe you'resort of not the most senior
person in the organization, notthe most junior, but you're
(26:27):
somewhere in the middle, andyou're looking at what where do
we start when we want to movefrom project to product? It all
sounds like a really importantmaneuver, but how do we get
going, you know, from youryears, or if that makes you
sound really old, but from yourfrom your vast experience, where
would you say you should beginDemetrius,
Dimitris Dimitrelos (26:55):
okay, first of all, I think that you should
realize that this is the majorchange effort is not something
that you can bring in aconsultant and write it up for
you and bring it in aPowerPoint. So this, this will
not work, because we have seenthis kind of mistakes and this
kind of request business shouldinitiate, the product part
(27:19):
organization the business shouldinitiate or be heavily involved
in this kind of oftransformation. In this kind of
request, a very good practicethat we have seen work is
creating a cross functionaltransformation team. We called
(27:42):
it transformation enablementteam, or something equivalent,
from people that comes fromdifferent parts of the
organization, product,technology, HR, finance, that
will power the transformation,that will iron out all the
details and that would takemajor decisions, as I said, from
(28:05):
all different perspective of theorganization. It helps very much
to bring an external view, anexternal partner that will be
willing not only to work withyou on the design level, but
also get down with you on thetrenches and work day to day
(28:30):
with you and help thistransformation on, on, on, on
The front line. So as long asyou have these basic
prerequisites in place, thenthinking hard about what your
(28:50):
value stream is. How do youdeliver value to your customers,
and what your product align,really is that would be the
first that would be the firststep.
Dave West (29:07):
That's awesome. I think the the advice about
building that cross functionalchange team, whatever they end
up being called, I was at aclient on Friday, or talking to
an organization on Friday at aclient I was on Zoom, but it
felt like I was there, and wewere talking a lot about the
(29:29):
transformation that they'retrying to make. And they have a
very established, pretty amazingbusiness, actually, and but
they're increasingly want to betake advantage of this amazing
business and scale it beyond itscurrent parameters. And so
they're looking at productmodel. They've got a very
specialized organizationoptimized around skills and
(29:52):
technology and and PLA and now,I hate to say it, but platforms
as well, and and the problem inthe most. Most important thing
that came out of that meetingwas the importance of building
this cross functional changeteam to drive because as they
incrementally adopt a productoperating model, you know, they
(30:12):
pick an area of the business,they focus on it. It's going to
cause all sorts of surprisesaround incentives,
organizational construct, hiringpolicies, you know, you name it,
supplier policies, outsource,you know, all that stuff. And so
you need that executivesponsorship and support for
dealing with those we'd callthem impediments, right? But
(30:33):
dealing with those challenges asthey occur that the team and the
teams of teams can't, can't dealwith, I think that that is so,
so important, and thatultimately, in most
organizations needs C levelsponsorship and access,
otherwise it you're alwaysfighting against this the
(30:54):
system. I think that's a really,really good bit of advice. Hey,
thank you for joining us todayon the scrum dot podcast. Yeah,
it really, really, really good.
Maybe we can talk again aboutsome, some of the, you know, the
more fine grain elements,whether it's portfolio planning,
whether it's product definition,whether it's organizational
(31:16):
constructs, whether it'sincentives. Maybe these are some
of the topics we can addressnext. But from a from a
perspective, it's reallyinteresting to hear the success
and the value that move into anagile product operating model is
having in your in your with yourcustomers at Accenture. Thank
you. Thank you. Dave, great. Sothank you for listening
(31:40):
everybody to today's scrum.org,community Podcast. Today, we're
incredibly lucky to haveDemetrius. DEMA trelos, gosh,
I'm going to destroy poorDemetrius his name every time I
say it, but talking to us, he'sa PST. Demetrius is a PST,
working for Sencha on drivingthe Agile product operating
(32:00):
model into their clients,creating that environment for
success. If I took anything awayfrom today's conversation, I
took lots of things, but onething that I wrote five times on
my sheet of paper were peopleare at the heart of this
transformation, and creating anenvironment for them to thrive
is ultimately what whatDemetrius does with Accenture in
(32:24):
Europe and the world. And Ithink that's something that we
should all focus on thinkingabout how we can create this,
this organization, to allowthese people to thrive, to
deliver value faster and fasterrates, which I thought was
really, really good. Well, ifyou liked what you heard today,
please subscribe, share withfriends, and, of course, come
(32:46):
back and listen to some more.
I'm lucky enough to have avariety of guests talking about
everything in the area ofprofessional Scrum Product,
thinking agile, and, of course,the Agile product operating
model. Thanks for your time,everybody and scrummorg.
Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community
(00:04):
podcast, a podcast from the homeof Scrum. In this podcast, we
feature professional scrumtrainers and other scrum
practitioners sharing theirstories and experiences to help
learn from the experience ofothers. We hope you enjoy this
episode. Hello
Dave West (00:20):
and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast. I'm
your host. Dave West CEO,here@scrum.org today's podcast
is actually something I'm reallyexcited about. We're fortunate
to have with us a professionalscrum trainer, Demetrius
demetres. I'm really excited tohave him join us, because he's
going to be talking to us abouthis experience of introducing
(00:43):
the Agile product operatingmodel. For the people that have
listened to this podcast before,or maybe you've been to
scrum.org, website, you've seenthat I'm really interested in
how organizations can move froma project based approach to a
product based approach, and whatdoes that really mean to them?
(01:04):
Demetrius has been doing someamazing things about introducing
products with his work atAccenture. So so I'm really
excited to have him at thepodcast today. Welcome
Demetrius.
Dimitris Dimitrelos (01:17):
Hello.
Hello, Dave. Thanks for havingme. It's really great to be
here, and it's also a reallynice subject that we're going to
discuss about tonight.
Dave West (01:26):
I think it's really, really interesting, the whole
topic of product thinking. Imean, it keeps me up at night.
It is so interesting because howdo organizations move from an
industrial mindset of projects,of allocating resources, of
managing these flows, tosomething about delivering value
(01:48):
to customers in a sort ofpackage sense. So, so I'm, I'm
glad you could spend the time.
Where are you joining us? FromDemetrius?
Dimitris Dimitrelos (01:56):
I'm joining from Martins, Greece,
Dave West (01:59):
Greece. Well, that's awesome, you know, sort of like
the place that civilizationbegan. So I guess it's very APO
then, really, to be talkingabout the next wave of change.
Maybe I'm playing this up alittle too much, I don't know,
right? So let's, let's, let'sstart at the beginning. That's a
very good place to begin. Toquote Julie Andrews, a palm
(02:24):
agile product operating model,or, you know, this move to
product thinking. What does itwhat does it mean to you?
Dimitris Dimitrelos (02:31):
So let me start by saying that in my mind,
product thinking is in the corefacility, in a sense, it's it's
the soul of agility. So I'm sureyou will agree with me that the
need for agility is there, andit's bigger than ever. So the
(02:55):
external environment, the marketdynamics, customer behaviors,
are changing faster than ever.
Crisis come and go and anincreasing rate. That means
companies, organizations, theyneed to adapt in a faster and
faster rate. So the need foragility is there, even though
the world agile might not be ashot as it used to be, right, but
(03:17):
the need for agility is there.
And a lot of organization, a lotof organizations, companies,
they focus on agile from thetechnology point of view. They
started doing agile in in it andin digital mainly the technology
(03:42):
department. So now it's like therest of the organization, the
business of the organization,the product part of the
organization is is joining thiswave. So the a bomb, the Agile
product operating model is astructured way to try to
(04:04):
organize the company around theproduct, around the value,
usually in Accenture. Ourcustomers call us to help them
transition in this way we haveto typical, typically. They want
to change organizationstructure, create new processes,
(04:28):
identify new skillscapabilities, create new talent
pools. They want to evaluate thetechnology. They want to change
the culture. So all these thingsare part of a major change
initiatives that APM requires.
Dave West (04:49):
It is interesting.
You said that you know this isbusiness driven, because one
thing that you know, agileobviously started in software
development and. My boss, KenSchwaber and and others were
working in these software teamsand realizing that traditional
project management approacheswere stifling the way in which
this technology, or technologywas being used. So became this
(05:12):
way of working, which then, youknow, transformed a lot of
technology organizations. So itstarted there. Then we had a few
years of business agility,right? And people were talking
about business and the like. Butwhat I saw, and I don't know if
you saw the same religious wasthis, they were taking the ideas
(05:34):
that were being practiced insoftware, but they weren't
changing the unit of consumptionthat they were basically taking
their existing projectmanagement operational systems
and saying, let's do some agilestuff on that, you know, build a
backlog and and manage, youknow, self organized teams that
aren't that self organized, butwe'll pretend they are. You
(05:56):
know, use user stories, JIRATrello, whatever the Kanban
boards make things, and it didhave some improvement, but
without the paradigm of aproduct and this universal sort
of container organizations weresort of floundering with
business agility, even with theSpotify model and all the all
(06:18):
the lie is that, and is thatwhat you saw, is that, what you
observed, as well asorganizations wrestled with
business agility,
Dimitris Dimitrelos (06:30):
absolutely, business agility means much more
than creating some Scrum teamswithin the business department.
Yeah, it's much more than that.
It's a much more brave move.
It's a much more structural movearound the organization, and
(06:51):
it's a very good sign that wesee that we are called from the
business side. Business has theinitiative on a pump
introduction and apon adoption.
And this time, technology isaround them is with them. So
it's not, you know, it's not nowinitiatives that are that begin
(07:16):
from digital as they used to,they begin from it, and then
they have to bring businessalong. Now business starts the
journey. Business starts tochange, and technology follows.
And this is just one of thedifferences that we see.
Dave West (07:40):
So let's explore those differences a little bit
more. So the number one is, thisis a business initiative, where
Agile transformationstraditionally have been a
technology initiative, right? Sothat's the you know. That's the
number one. What? What? Whatother you know differences do
you see Demetrius. The second
Dimitris Dimitrelos (08:00):
one is the definition of success. So if you
start from technology, thensuccess is smooth delivery,
right? But now it's not aboutdelivery. It's not only about
delivery anymore. It's aboutproduct success. And one thing
you could say here is thatproduct success also include
product operations, right?
Business Operations are in themix. So it's not only about new
(08:24):
projects, you know, getting morestuff, more features, out of the
door. It's also really having animpact on the market. So that
means creating feedback loopsabout what you're building. Do
you measure what you'rebuilding? Do you measure the
impact of what you're building,what your developer on your
(08:45):
customer behaviors? Are yougetting value for the money you
spend? And also, how do youintegrate the business operation
with the project, the productdevelopment. So you create a new
product, how do you market it?
(09:06):
How do you create campaignsaround how do you support it
with your customer base? Allthese things are creating value
from the product, and it's nowone thing. It's not, you know, a
wall between delivery projectsand business operations.
Dave West (09:26):
I just want to lean into that for a moment, because
I think what's reallyinteresting from the
conversations I've had withorganizations who are on this
journey, the one thing that itbecomes very apparent is this
holistic way of looking at valuethrough the lens of a product
highlights the fact that theirorganizations are not
(09:50):
necessarily structuredconsistently across a value
stream, meaning you've goteither a lot of people in. In in
one part, and not a lot in theother meaning, people that are
developing new products, gettingit out is really hard, and
you've already got too manyproducts that these operational
(10:11):
groups are supporting, or youhave operations that that are
too busy focused on thechallenges with the existing
products that they can't they'vegot no room, or, you know,
you've got all sorts ofdifferent sort of problems that
this makes very, very apparent,which can be very challenging
for an organization because theyactually now are looking at, you
(10:35):
know, the examples are on thetechnology side. Things like
technical debt are veryapparent. Now you know that that
business debt is very apparent,meaning, you know, that's sort
of like putting things off,having manual processes that
should be automated as they adda new product they break, or,
you know, these sort of things.
Do you see that as well, thatthis holistic sort of
(10:58):
perspective is a little scary,and and
Dimitris Dimitrelos (11:03):
the way this is, this is translated into
change, is that we're buildingthe product development, the
business operations people, notonly within the same
organizational structure as suchas a tribe or another release
train or whatever You may callit, but also within the same
team, so you have businessoperations and product
(11:25):
development people within thesame small, cross functional
team, so they interact. And whenthe product, while the product
is developed, then everybodythinks on how we will support
and market it and bring it tothe customers. Yeah? So it's a
really, yeah, holistic, holisticview. And basically, I believe
(11:49):
it's one of the big values. It'sone of the biggest values that
this model brings the holisticview brings people together,
much less politics, a lot a lotof better alignment and a lot of
less escalations. So I there's afunny story. I remember when we
(12:15):
introduced product, operatingmodel in a large organization,
and after a few months, we did abig retrospective with all the
stakeholders, and the CEO joinedus, who was not, we had his
sponsorship, but he was not veryactively involved in the day to
day. And when he came hiscomment was, well, something is
(12:39):
very good, something is verywrong, because I don't get any
escalations, no more. Sotypically, you know, people from
business and technology, theywill fight, and they will come
to me for resolution, yeah, forescalation. So I don't do that
anymore. So either you'reworking very well, or you're
putting everything under thecarpet, and I should be worried.
(12:59):
So that was his comment, andthat's the biggest win. Yeah,
that's
Dave West (13:03):
yeah. So simplicity, I mean, from my experience,
coming from the softwareindustry, which historically has
been very focused on productsand built around products, you
know that keeping it reallysimple, it was always sort of
ironic. When I was developingproducts, you'd go into these
banks who, you know, have very,you know, they have financial
(13:27):
products and 1000s of people andloads and loads of money. And
actually, you know, a lovelycanteen where, you know, in my
company, we didn't actually havea canteen. You had to go to
Subway, down the round the roundthe block anyway. And you'd go
in, and the level of complexity,there was 1000s of people. It
looked like orchestrating all ofthese different bits to get and
(13:50):
I'm like, Why? Why don't youjust align around these
products? Are like, well, whatare the products? And I was
like, Well, we start with thecustomer. Understand your
existing systems, understandwhere you where your value is,
and start there and work yourway out. But we could never
really do that. So what haschanged is it, is it technology
(14:12):
has driven these organizationsto the businesses to really
realize, is it that there's awhole new group of business
leaders that are more technologyoriented, that suddenly realize
that their biggest opportunityis with the application of
technology to solve theircustomers problems. What's
(14:34):
changed? Demetrius,
Dimitris Dimitrelos (14:36):
well, it's not it's not as simple as it
looks. Please remember that thein the in the last decade, a lot
of organizations have beenfocusing on on digital on the
digital transformation, right?
Yeah, and that means that a lotof of energy went into that
department. So a lot. Of agilewent into that, that area as
(15:01):
well. So a lot of Agiletransformation, agile teams were
around digital departments anddigital transformation. But if
you think about it, digital sothey shop or the portal of
organization that is used tointeract with customers is not a
product per se, right? It's onlya channel. So you have to think
(15:23):
more holistically and and nowthat organizations are
organizing around product, meansthat you have to transform this
previous organizational agilestructures that were around
digital and now wrap them aroundyour real product structure. If
(15:47):
you're a bank, it may be yourcards business or your your loan
business or your, you know,savings business, that is the
real product, and this is wherewe see customers are organizing
their organizations around,yeah,
Dave West (16:08):
the that when you see people have a mobile product
team, you think to yourself,well, that I understand it's a
competency. I understand thatthere are some things that are
unique about mobile in terms ofthe technology, but I and maybe
there's some opportunities fordoing things differently with
your customer. So I get thathowever that should be, you
(16:31):
know, the that should besprinkled into if your bank
loans, private checking, orwhatever, those you know, and it
becomes this capability that allof your products can take
advantage of. And yes, maybeyou've got a community of
practice around it, or, or somesort of, you know, I guess it
(16:52):
would be so, you know, some sortof competency in that. But, but
that, you know, driving thatacross all of the products that
deliver money, mobile doesn'tmake you any money, your
checking account, does yourloans, do your brokerage, your,
you know, whatever lifeinsurance, whatever the things
are. So I think, I think that isa big, big change that
(17:15):
organizations are wrestlingwith. And so let's talk a little
bit about challenges, you know,so from what I see, just to sort
of go on from that is existingsystems, legacy systems, which
are both an opportunity becauseit means that people are using
stuff and, you know, generatingmoney and value, but it's also
an absolute nightmare, becauseyou're now trying to break those
(17:38):
systems And the organizationalconstructs that are associated
with them into a product culturewould that is that the biggest
challenge Dimitris or otherother challenges,
Dimitris Dimitrelos (17:49):
this is one big challenge that's very true,
but with all these years ofother transformations, we have
now developed some practices,some methods to help us overcome
this. So you may call themchapters. You may call them
communities of practice, andother methods and practices that
(18:15):
will help you overcome this, thedivision of work between
different organizational unitsthat actually work on the same
legacy systems. But there arealso other challenges. Please,
don't forget, this is a majorchange initiative, and the way
(18:38):
that your product is yourproduct is structured may not
align with your currentorganizational structure, so
that means changes may beneeded, and this is always
difficult in organization. Thisis always this always requires
(19:03):
strong C level sponsorship,strong CEO sponsorship. So this
is what we do, yes. So this iswhat Accenture does. We help
them. We help customers. Is thechange with major change
initiative, we have experiencewith other organizations, and we
(19:25):
have different ways of engagingthat have to do with the
specific customer. For example,there are customers that tell us
we want a lot ofprescriptiveness. We want
something that you have done inother similar clients in other
countries, and it works. So wewant you to bring us a model
(19:50):
that will work more or less. Andthere are other customers that
start from a blank sheet ofpaper, and they. Go, Okay, let's
design it from scratch and letlet's make this our own. We are
ready to invest time in this andmake it our own. Do you think
(20:12):
that the biggest
Dave West (20:13):
reason why, and this is sort of more of a
philosophical question, perhaps,and stop me if I'm getting too
sort of deep. But for myobservation, the biggest
challenge that I see aroundadopting these kind of models is
status, power, authority, thesevery human things. For instance,
(20:35):
I was interviewing a largefinancial institution when I was
researching product definition.
So I was basically, I met peoplethat were working in product
model in this company, and Isaid, How did your products get
defined? And, you know, I wasexpecting to hear, you know,
value streams, legacy systems,data, I don't know, these
(20:56):
things, and all of those thingswere discussed, but, but then
one guy said to me, he goes, Doyou know really how they were? I
was like, goes, who we said,basically, it's almost an
indication of power structuresin the existing organization. He
goes, who we were scared ofmoving. I was like, what? And,
(21:16):
and it was, it was just sort ofironic that the cute, because
people build these, like therewas one product that, I mean, he
was speaking to us candidly,with me, said it's much bigger,
and we invest a lot more in itthan we really should. But the
reason why we do that is, yes,it's important, but the reason
(21:37):
why we do that is because theguy that runs it, everybody's
kind of, they don't want to dealwith him. So what we do is we
basically, when we transitionthe product, he was an
application system and somedata, and we just sort of, like,
put a ring fence around that andsay, well, we're not going to
change that. We're just going tocall it a product. And and he
(21:57):
goes, he says, honestly, is thatthe right thing to do? I don't
know. Does it cause some issues?
Definitely around dependencies,definitely around empowerment,
definitely around value, likethere's lot more value could be
delivered in other products ifwe really broke it up. But he
(22:19):
goes, but honestly, in terms ofmy life's a lot easier because,
because we haven't messed withthat, because I'll take that.
And I thought that was quiteinteresting. Do you do you see
that sometimes? Or, you
Dimitris Dimitrelos (22:32):
know, you know, Dave, it's not so wrong.
Let me explain myself. Oh,interesting. There are people
that the organization reallyneeds. There are very important
C level executives that theorganization, that have been
with organization for a longtime. They're really important.
(22:54):
They drive this organization,not only on sea level, but on
various levels. Yeah, you wantthese people. You don't want to
just bring a ready made model,and some people just, you know,
they don't fill in some someposition. So let's get rid of
(23:14):
them. Doesn't work like that.
You need these people. So whatyou do, what we have seen,
organizations successfully do isthat they let these people
transform their role to fit intointo the new structure, into the
new organization. And we haveseen people evolve. We have seen
(23:34):
technologies become excellentbusiness sponsors and excellent
business owners. And we haveseen people that were project
managers become excellentproduct managers, because
Product Manager productownership, is another major
(23:55):
change we're seeing in thisorganization, product is a very
good is a very good example ofwhat an opportunity in an
organization that is switchingto a product operating model may
look like. So up to now, productmanager, product management was
more like a function in themarketing department, in the
(24:20):
product department, which wasnot so involved in in delivery.
It was not so involved inproduct creation. It was more
like an operational, let's saycommunication role. Now, this
role is pivotal. Now, this isthe general of the product. So
the product manager now reallyowns the product in the in the
(24:45):
scrum, Product Owner sense theycontrol delivery. They control
product business operations. Sothey are really the sense of. Is
what an end to end owner of aproduct may look like. So I
(25:06):
believe this is this can happenin various levels of the
organizations. People cantransform their roles, but you
always start with the people. Itmakes sense.
Dave West (25:23):
That's an interesting perspective, and maybe yeah, and
one that I think we all need tobe a little bit more conscious
of, that this isn't a architect.
We often think of this in termsof an architectural problem that
needs solving. Organizing. Howdo we organize support products?
What products do we have? Youknow, what are the dependencies
(25:43):
between those products? How dowe build the systems and the
processes? And we forget? Ithink that ultimately, an
organization is just the sum ofthe people that make that
organization up, the ideas, thethoughts, the experiences, you
know, the problems that they'veseen in the past will help
shape, you know, solve theproblems that they see in the
future. And I think we do forgetthat, right? So we try to keep
(26:06):
these, these conversationsshort. And I know you and I
could talk about this all dayand and I'd learn so much from
you. So if you were juststarting this journey, if you're
sitting there, and maybe you'resort of not the most senior
person in the organization, notthe most junior, but you're
(26:27):
somewhere in the middle, andyou're looking at what where do
we start when we want to movefrom project to product? It all
sounds like a really importantmaneuver, but how do we get
going, you know, from youryears, or if that makes you
sound really old, but from yourfrom your vast experience, where
would you say you should beginDemetrius,
Dimitris Dimitrelos (26:55):
okay, first of all, I think that you should
realize that this is the majorchange effort is not something
that you can bring in aconsultant and write it up for
you and bring it in aPowerPoint. So this, this will
not work, because we have seenthis kind of mistakes and this
kind of request business shouldinitiate, the product part
(27:19):
organization the business shouldinitiate or be heavily involved
in this kind of oftransformation. In this kind of
request, a very good practicethat we have seen work is
creating a cross functionaltransformation team. We called
(27:42):
it transformation enablementteam, or something equivalent,
from people that comes fromdifferent parts of the
organization, product,technology, HR, finance, that
will power the transformation,that will iron out all the
details and that would takemajor decisions, as I said, from
(28:05):
all different perspective of theorganization. It helps very much
to bring an external view, anexternal partner that will be
willing not only to work withyou on the design level, but
also get down with you on thetrenches and work day to day
(28:30):
with you and help thistransformation on, on, on, on
The front line. So as long asyou have these basic
prerequisites in place, thenthinking hard about what your
(28:50):
value stream is. How do youdeliver value to your customers,
and what your product align,really is that would be the
first that would be the firststep.
Dave West (29:07):
That's awesome. I think the the advice about
building that cross functionalchange team, whatever they end
up being called, I was at aclient on Friday, or talking to
an organization on Friday at aclient I was on Zoom, but it
felt like I was there, and wewere talking a lot about the
(29:29):
transformation that they'retrying to make. And they have a
very established, pretty amazingbusiness, actually, and but
they're increasingly want to betake advantage of this amazing
business and scale it beyond itscurrent parameters. And so
they're looking at productmodel. They've got a very
specialized organizationoptimized around skills and
(29:52):
technology and and PLA and now,I hate to say it, but platforms
as well, and and the problem inthe most. Most important thing
that came out of that meetingwas the importance of building
this cross functional changeteam to drive because as they
incrementally adopt a productoperating model, you know, they
(30:12):
pick an area of the business,they focus on it. It's going to
cause all sorts of surprisesaround incentives,
organizational construct, hiringpolicies, you know, you name it,
supplier policies, outsource,you know, all that stuff. And so
you need that executivesponsorship and support for
dealing with those we'd callthem impediments, right? But
(30:33):
dealing with those challenges asthey occur that the team and the
teams of teams can't, can't dealwith, I think that that is so,
so important, and thatultimately, in most
organizations needs C levelsponsorship and access,
otherwise it you're alwaysfighting against this the
(30:54):
system. I think that's a really,really good bit of advice. Hey,
thank you for joining us todayon the scrum dot podcast. Yeah,
it really, really, really good.
Maybe we can talk again aboutsome, some of the, you know, the
more fine grain elements,whether it's portfolio planning,
whether it's product definition,whether it's organizational
(31:16):
constructs, whether it'sincentives. Maybe these are some
of the topics we can addressnext. But from a from a
perspective, it's reallyinteresting to hear the success
and the value that move into anagile product operating model is
having in your in your with yourcustomers at Accenture. Thank
you. Thank you. Dave, great. Sothank you for listening
(31:40):
everybody to today's scrum.org,community Podcast. Today, we're
incredibly lucky to haveDemetrius. DEMA trelos, gosh,
I'm going to destroy poorDemetrius his name every time I
say it, but talking to us, he'sa PST. Demetrius is a PST,
working for Sencha on drivingthe Agile product operating
(32:00):
model into their clients,creating that environment for
success. If I took anything awayfrom today's conversation, I
took lots of things, but onething that I wrote five times on
my sheet of paper were peopleare at the heart of this
transformation, and creating anenvironment for them to thrive
is ultimately what whatDemetrius does with Accenture in
(32:24):
Europe and the world. And Ithink that's something that we
should all focus on thinkingabout how we can create this,
this organization, to allowthese people to thrive, to
deliver value faster and fasterrates, which I thought was
really, really good. Well, ifyou liked what you heard today,
please subscribe, share withfriends, and, of course, come
(32:46):
back and listen to some more.
I'm lucky enough to have avariety of guests talking about
everything in the area ofprofessional Scrum Product,
thinking agile, and, of course,the Agile product operating
model. Thanks for your time,everybody and scrummorg.
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