Editor’s note: In January, Forte Group hosted an “Insights on Innovation” event in Chicago. Speaker Andre Barentz, a thought leader on lean innovation and former Director of Innovation Labs at Allstate, outlined how a lean operating framework, centered on product and portfolio management, can work for startups and large enterprises, alike.
What follows is an overview of Andre’s presentation, “How to grow and profit sustainably through technology innovation.” In this article, Andre lays out how to track the arc of your product or portfolio of products through the software product development life cycle (sPDLC).
The three horizons:
Knowing where you’re at in the sPDLC
Before setting out to build any piece of software, product managers, business stakeholders, and anyone else involved in the sPDLC, should ask two simple questions:
What problem are we trying to solve?
- Most managers in mature companies are preoccupied with running their existing businesses. How might they operate core businesses and build new ones at the same time?
- Most founders of startups know how to innovate. How might they scale the business and reach profitability without sacrificing the vibrant startup culture? How might they repeat the initial success?