Maximizing business potential with unified Integrated teams and robust engineering under product-centric value delivery

In today's evolving business landscape, product-centric value delivery is a transformative blueprint that reshapes business operations and value delivery. It integrates product thinking into the creation of services, products, and experiences, focusing on continuous improvement to meet customer needs and market demands. This strategy differs from traditional project-based models, stressing on continuous product development and enhancement to boost value. Let's delve into its two essential dimensions - unified integrated teams and engineering, which are crucial for driving business success.

Unified integrated teams: accountability beyond development

A critical aspect of this model is the formation of unified integrated teams. These teams are not just responsible for the development phase but extend their accountability into the operational phase. In other words, they take end-to-end ownership through the product lifecycle. This involves:

Cross-functional collaboration: Integration of various functions – such as development, operations, marketing, and customer service – ensures that all team members are aligned with the product's goals and customer needs.

Extended accountability: In this setup, the responsibility of team members doesn't end with the product launch. In a product-centric organization, persistent teams are accountable for the product's performance in the market, its reception by customers, and its ongoing evolution. This model is becoming the norm.

Fostering a culture of ownership: Creating a sense of ownership among team members encourages them to view what they create not just as a task but to be invested in its outcomes, enhancing both product quality and team motivation.

Engineering excellence by embracing DevSecOps and SRE

To make product-centric value delivery efficient and resilient, incorporating the right engineering practices is essential. This is where DevSecOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) come into play:

DevSecOps integration: DevSecOps automation bridges the gap between development and operations, ensuring faster and more efficient deployment of products, without compromising on security. This integration leads to quicker releases which are secure by design, better quality assurance, aiding faster realization of value with more responsive product enhancements.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE): SRE combines established software engineering practices with operational expertise. Embracing SRE principles enables enterprises to build scalable, reliable software systems that cater to evolving needs and provide exceptional user experiences. This approach includes observability, automated operational tasks, and proactive issue identification to safeguard the customer experience. Its advantages extend beyond DevSecOps engineering, fostering collaboration between development and operations teams as a unified entity.

Continuous improvement and learning: Both DevSecOps and SRE emphasize continuous learning and improvement. By constantly analysing performance data, the development and operations teams can collaboratively make informed decisions to enhance product resilience and efficiency.

Overcoming challenges for implementation

As utopian as this sounds, implementing product-centric value delivery with integrated teams and advanced engineering practices is not without challenges.

To build efficient, result-oriented teams, organizations need to foster a culture that supports change, encourages cross-departmental collaboration, and promotes collective responsibility, through learning, experimentation, platform thinking, and interdisciplinary engagement. In addition to technical skill development, it is crucial to train teams in engineering methodologies like DevSecOps and SRE. Teams need to have in-depth understanding of advanced engineering practices including Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), Test Driven Development (TDD), Tech debt management among others. Organizations can scale agile by using Scaled Agile Frameworks (SAFe) to visualize value flows within the organization, from operations to end-to-end product value streams. This understanding can help them drive team dynamics by enabling autonomous teams within Agile release trains to deliver desired business outcomes.

Establishing an engineering ecosystem with DevSecOps and SRE-supportive tools and using a data-driven approach enhances value tracking visibility. Utilizing AI in the engineering and operations lifecycle significantly boosts productivity, quality, and agility. Also, product-centric value delivery marks a major shift in business service, product, and experience development, delivery, and maintenance.

Businesses can achieve greater efficiency, resilience, and customer satisfaction by:

1. Promoting accountable, unified teams throughout the product lifecycle.
2. Establishing an advanced engineering ecosystem with DevSecOps, SRE, and investments in platforms and tools.

Despite potential challenges, transitioning to this approach enhances product quality, market response, and customer experience, thereby increasing business value and enabling a business to thrive in the digital era.

The article has been written by Shalini A. Nair, Vice President, Corporate Initiatives, Quality, Infosys