Welcome to our monthly Product Operations series, where we talk about how we help teams optimize cross-functional collaboration to match their moment of scale so that product teams can deliver value fast.
Is your product delivery organization struggling to keep up as it grows? Are your teams drowning in meetings but still missing critical information? Do stakeholders constantly ask for updates while remaining frustrated with the pace of delivery?
You're not alone. As product organizations scale, the informal processes that once worked seamlessly begin to crack under pressure. What you're experiencing isn't a failure, it's a moment of scale that requires a new approach.
Simple changes can shift your product delivery approach from a source of constant friction to a strategic advantage through a right-sized, decision-making framework that empowers teams while maintaining strategic alignment.Â
The Challenge
Our client's product delivery organization was facing significant growing pains. As their teams expanded, they encountered several critical issues:
Communication gaps between teams and leadership
Misalignment between detailed plans and strategic initiatives
Lack of visibility into cross-team progress
Diminished focus on results and outcomes
Insufficient forums for teams to express what is needed to enable successful delivery
Despite using numerous tools and holding frequent meetings (many redundant), the organization was struggling to create coherent momentum and clarity. Teams were operating in silos, and leaders lacked the context needed to make informed decisions.
Our Approach: Making the Simple Easy and the Complex Possible
Before diving into solutions, we needed to understand the organization's context. We conducted an assessment focused on:
Existing strengths: What muscles were already firing? Where could we find wins to build upon?
Pain points: Where was the most friction occurring in the delivery process?
Change history: Which past change management efforts had succeeded or failed, and why?
Cultural concerns: What consistency practices made people nervous, and for what reasons?
Minimal viable change: What was the smallest thing we could do to make meaningful progress?
This assessment revealed a crucial insight: the organization didn't need to start with more processes or tools—they needed a common language and framework for decision-making that would empower teams while providing appropriate guardrails.
Meeting the Moment of Scale
A critical realization was that the client had reached a pivotal "moment of scale" where their previous approaches were no longer sufficient. As organizations grow, the informal processes and communication channels that worked in smaller settings begin to break down. What once functioned well for a handful of teams becomes unmanageable across dozens.
This moment of scale required a thoughtful response—not simply adding more process for process's sake, but creating a framework that could flex and adapt as the organization continued to grow. The solutions that had worked in the past weren't wrong; they were simply designed for a different scale of operation. Our task was to help them evolve their approach to match their current reality while building in resilience for future growth.
The Solution: A Clear Decision-Making Framework
We partnered to define balanced "enabling constraints"—a clear framework with guardrails that increased focus on creative problem-solving while respecting the organization's context. These boundaries helped teams understand what they controlled and how to achieve their goals.
A Structured Product Delivery Lifecycle
The cornerstone of the solution was a straightforward product delivery lifecycle built around key decision points. We introduced a common language organized into phases aimed at answered key questions:
Validate: Is this a real problem? Should we do this?
Evaluate: How big is the opportunity if we solve this? Should we do this now?
Design: What would the solution look like and is it feasible? Can we do this now? What should we do first?
Build: Let's do this!
Learn: How did we do? How can we scale and support this effectively?
Each phase represented a diamond in the process, including both divergent and convergent thinking, bringing together collaborative efforts across Design, Engineering, Product, and Stakeholders.
Rather than mandating specific methodologies, we provided optional practices to help teams answer these fundamental questions in ways that made sense for their specific contexts.
Transparency, FTW
Instead of attempting a massive transformation, we focused on quick wins to build momentum and trust. By starting with small, high-impact changes, we reduced resistance and proved value early while ensuring our approach was right-sized to the complexity of the work.
This approach embodied our philosophy of "make the simple easy and the complex possible."
The most impactful early change was surprisingly straightforward. Teams reorganizes their opportunity backlogs to represent where work was in the delivery lifecycle process. This simple act of categorization forced teams to:
Assess current work against the framework's decision criteria
Create visibility into which stage each opportunity was actually in
Identify gaps where work was progressing without alignment on key questions
By mapping existing work to the framework, teams gained immediate clarity without needing to learn complex new tools or processes. This approach allowed us to introduce the framework's value through practical application rather than theoretical training.
The reorganized backlogs also created a shared visual language that made it easier for stakeholders to understand progress and for leadership to see the portfolio distribution across the different phases.
Results: Swift Transformation
The immediate impact of this new framework surprised even the most jaded, change-fatigued stakeholders:
Department-wide adoption in roadmap communications within weeks
Aligned expectations as stakeholders gained shared understanding of project stages and progress
Solid foundation for identifying key practices needed to support teams' decision-making throughout the delivery lifecycle
Conclusion: A Framework for Sustainable Success
By implementing a clear decision-making framework that respected the organization's context, product delivery started to shift from a source of frustration to a strategic advantage. The framework provided a common language and structure that:
Guided teams from ambiguous problems to validated solutions
Created appropriate constraints that enhanced rather than limited creativity
Empowered teams to take ownership of their decisions
Reduced meeting overhead while improving communication
Most importantly, this framework met the moment. It provided the structure needed for the organization's current size while remaining adaptable enough to evolve as they continue to grow. Rather than creating rigid processes that would eventually become constraints, we established principles and patterns that could scale organically with the organization.
Stay tuned for the next article in our Product Operations series, where we'll deep dive into the Portfolio Review Practice that supports this framework.
Want to learn how we can help transform your product delivery? Reach out to discuss your specific challenges.