SpringOne 2021 Session Title: Achieving Escape Velocity in Your Digital Transformation Through Product Thinking Speakers: Gautham Pallapa, Executive Advisor at VMware; Henri van den Bulk, Executive Technical Advisor at VMware

1. Achieving Escape Velocity in
Your Digital Transformation
Through Product Thinking
September 1–2, 2021
springone.io
1
#digitaltransformation

2. Introduction
2
Henri van den Bulk
Executive Technical Advisor
VMware
@hmvandenb
Dr. Gautham Pallapa
Executive Advisor
VMware
@gpallapa
#tanzuvalueadvisors
#leadership
Slack Channel: #session-digital-transformation-through-product-thinking

3. 3
Global GDP will be digitized by 2022
65%
According to International Data Corporation (IDC) research
$6.8T

4. 4

5. 5
Digital transformation is defined as “the
incorporation of modern technologies into an
organization’s processes and strategies to
achieve business goals, such as improving
customer outcomes or operational agility.” –
MIT Executive Study
#digitaltransformation

6. 6
Digital transformations fail all the time.
Companies didn’t achieve any business value
from their digital transformation
73%
Based on the Everest Group report
Failure Rate of
Digital Transformation

7. Why do Digital Transformations Fail?
#1 Unspoken disagreement among top
managers about goals (outcomes)
#2 An inability to scale
https://hbr.org/2019/10/the-two-big-reasons-that-digital-transformations-fail
#digitaltransformationfailure

8. 8
“Innovation is about
increasing the average
progress between iterations
and reducing the number of
iterations over time.” – Elon
Musk

9. What forces are at work that prevent your
transformation?
9
Drag
Lift
Thrust
Mass
#escapevelocity

10. Contactless, Digital-First World
Product-centric Delivery
Organize people and continuously deliver value to customers
10

11. Being Product-centric
Product
A deliverable that provides
business value to a consumer
Solves for a specific problem or
pain that the consumer
experiences
Can be used to get value in return
11
Product Thinking
Journey from understanding the
problem/pain to delivering the
product that solves for this
problem/pain
Goal – Reduce the gap between
consumer (user) and producer
(business)
#productthinking

12. Empathy is a core tenet
Empathy: Love and understanding for fellow humans
In Product Thinking
Ability to step into a user’s shoes
Sense from their point of view
Develop an emotional connection with the user
Do something actionable to reduce the user’s pain
How can you build a product that the user needs
if you cannot understand why they want it?
12
#empathy

13. Forces that help achieve escape velocity
13
Drag
Lift
Thrust
Mass
#escapevelocity

14. Forces that help achieve escape velocity
14
Drag
Lift
Thrust
Product
#escapevelocity

15. Forces that help achieve escape velocity
15
Drag
Lift
Product Organization
Product
#escapevelocity

16. Product
Organization
Patterns
● Focus on the problem, not the solution
● Empathy over Assessment
● View the Macro picture (product) rather than
micro (feature)
● Empowered and enabled teams
● Structure based on product lines or market
segment
16
Not
Product Features #productorganization

17. Product
Organization
Anti-Patterns
● Maslow’s Hammer - For a hammer, everything
looks like a nail
● Clinical evaluation instead of empathy
● Obsessed with features instead of systemic
thinking
● Hierarchical, political, bureaucratic organizations
● Structure based on silos, functions, or power
● What anti-patterns do you face within your
organization today? Any different anti-pattern?
17

18. Not Knowing Why
Anti-Patterns for a workforce
18
Lack of Prioritization
No Clear
Definition of
Done
No Sense
of Urgency
Not Enough
Communication
No
Empowerment
Not Enough
Change Agents
No Incentives
to Transform

19. 19
Alignment Architecture Tech Adoption Security Cost
Culture
High performers spend 50% of their time on new work, deliver 61% faster, release
features 10x more often, and iterate continuously based on user feedback 1
1 A combination of VMware customer measurement and benchmarks provided by the DORA report, 2019
Building Blocks for Digital Leaders

20. Drag
Thrust
Mass
Launch Platform
= Product Organization
Self Enabled Product teams focused on flow. Leverage
platforms that create flow.
= Product
Lean approach, Minimum Business Increments (MBIs)
How to overcome the aerodynamic forces?
So you can achieve escape velocity

21. The elements of a modern Product
Organization
Customer-centric, aligned and connected, semi-autonomous,
measured and business outcome driven.

22. Definitions: Anchoring “Product”
2
2
Product
Mindset
Product
Organization
Product
Team
Practice
Lead
Practitioner
● vs. Project
Mindset
aka:
● Software
Delivery Org
● AppDev Org
aka:
● Delivery team
● AppDev team
● Balanced team
Experienced,
skilled Practitioner
whose job and/or
responsibility is to
support Product
Team delivery by
focusing on
practice
excellence &
growth
e.g.
● Product Mgr
● Product
Designer (UX)
● Engineer /
Developer
● Solution
Architect
#productmindset

23. Drag
Lift
Thrust
Mass
Launch Platform
= Product Organization
Self Enabled Product teams focused on flow. Leverage
platforms that create flow.
= Product
Lean approach, Minimum Business Increments (MBIs)
How to overcome the aerodynamic forces?
So you can achieve escape velocity
Lift : Leadership provides vision and focus through
articulating clear outcomes
Drag : Establish a learning organization that explores
hypothesis and runs experiments.

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Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
!

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Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
What skills and practices do need?
How do we operationalize this?
What values do we hold to guide our decisions?
Decisions MADE
Decisions TO MAKE

26. Decision Made: Business Outcomes
High performing Product Organizations drive combined commercial and non-
commercial goals.
SDO performance is a key value driver and differentiator for teams and
organizations in any industry because it enables organizations to leverage software
to deliver improved outcomes.

27. Confidential │ ©2021 VMware, Inc. 27
Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
What skills and practices do need?
How do we operationalize this?
What values do we hold to guide our decisions?

28. Decision Made:
DevOps Research Association Metrics
Four metrics that provide a high-level systems view of software delivery and
performance, that predict an organization’s ability to achieve its business outcomes
“Elite Performers” are 1.53 times more likely to meet or exceed their goals for organizational
performance, and “High Performers” are 1.38 times more likely to meet or exceed their goals

29. Confidential │ ©2021 VMware, Inc. 29
Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
Principles
Establish key principles that you value to help
the organization in making decisions semi-
autonomously.
What skills and practices do need?
How do we operationalize this?

30. Decision Time: What’s Your Set Of Principles?
A set of guiding principles grounds the organization and all
those within it. Team members and leadership get to point
to the principles to justify operational decisions.
Why the
decision?
A set of guiding, sticky, principles that are important to your
org and that inform decisions on how humans should
behave in the delivery of software.
What’s the
decision?
Accelerate buy-in to a set of new Guiding Principles
adapted to your org, by collaborating with everyone. Hold
workshops, listening sessions and Requests For Comment.
How to
make the
decision
Choose the Principles
right for your org. E.g.:
The explicit value statements which guide the behavior of everyone in your Product Organization

31. Confidential │ ©2021 VMware, Inc. 31
Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
Practices
Establish a balanced set of crafts with core
practices.
How do we operationalize this?
Principles
Establish key principles that you value to help
the organization in making decisions semi-
autonomously.

32. Decision Time: What’s Your Set Of Practices?
No software is the same. No team is the same.
Adaptive software requires adaptive teams and practices.
Practice mix should embody the Guiding Principles
Why the
decision?
Each Balanced Team should be empowered to decide their
mix of practices. Practice mix may look different from team
to team.
What’s the
decision?
Allow the Balanced Team to experiment with practices.
Encourage them to self-organize into communities of
practice. Empower them to recognize good practice
patterns across teams and codify for future teams.
How to
make the
decision
A lot of Practice options!
Engineering, Product Mgmt & Product Design: crafts with many practices to choose from

33. Confidential │ ©2021 VMware, Inc. 33
Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
Practices
Establish a balanced set of crafts with core
practices.
Principles
Establish key principles that you value to help
the organization in making decisions semi-
autonomously.
Operating Model
Choosing the frameworks and structures for
bottoms-up governance and servant leadership
that allow you to create a learning organization.

34. Decision Time: How will You Iterate Through Operating Models?
Choosing the frameworks and structures for bottoms-up governance and servant leadership
Employ an agile, iterative
approach of experimentation
and small failures to develop
your Product Organization
operating model.
Allow the work of iterative
software delivery..
by a critical mass of delivery
teams..
to yield learnings over time..
that inform a tailored operating
model custom fit for your
business..
and gut check model choices
with your Guiding Principles.

35. Confidential │ ©2021 VMware, Inc. 35
Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
Practices
Establish a balanced set of crafts with core
practices.
Principles
Establish key principles that you value to help
the organization in making decisions semi-
autonomously.
Operating Model
Choosing the frameworks and structures for
bottoms-up governance and servant leadership
that allow you to create a learning organization.
Guide

36. Confidential │ ©2021 VMware, Inc. 36
Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
Practices
Establish a balanced set of crafts with core
practices.
Principles
Establish key principles that you value to help
the organization in making decisions semi-
autonomously.
Operating Model
Choosing the frameworks and structures for
bottoms-up governance and servant leadership
that allow you to create a learning organization.
Guide
Inform

37. Confidential │ ©2021 VMware, Inc. 37
Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
Practices
Establish a balanced set of crafts with core
practices.
Principles
Establish key principles that you value to help
the organization in making decisions semi-
autonomously.
Operating Model
Choosing the frameworks and structures for
bottoms-up governance and servant leadership
that allow you to create a learning organization.
Guide
Inform
Drive

38. Confidential │ ©2021 VMware, Inc. 38
Business Outcomes
Having concise, defined, and observable result
or change in business or products, supported by
a specific measure.
DORA Metrics
The key metrics that capture the effective and
efficient ways to develop and deliver software.
Practices
Establish a balanced set of crafts with core
practices.
Principles
Establish key principles that you value to help
the organization in making decisions semi-
autonomously.
Operating Model
Choosing the frameworks and structures for
bottoms-up governance and servant leadership
that allow you to create a learning organization.
Guide
Inform
Drive
Deliver

39. What we have learnt so far
• Digital transformations and why so many of them fail
• Forces that help and hinder a transformation from taking off
• Product and product thinking
• Empathy as part of organizational culture
• Patterns and anti-patterns
• How to build or restructure for a successful product organization
• Defining outcomes and metrics
• Principles, Practices, and Operating Model

40. How can we transform our organizations?
Hypothesis based development or lean experiments
We believe that [performing this activity]
[for these people]
will achieve [this outcome]
We will know that we are successful when we see
[this measurable signal from our experiment]
Use #escapevelocity #tanzuvalueadvisors
Email us at TanzuValueAdvisors@vmware.com 4
0
Solution Hypothesis
Market fit
Measurable outcome
Measured Goal

41. Thank you