The big product and platform shift: Five actions to get the transformation right
| The big product and platform shift: Five actions to get the transformation right | |
|---|---|
| Published By | Articles by McKinsey |
| Publish Date | June 9, 2023 |
| Authors | Rushabh Gala, Naufal Khan, Ling Lau, Gautam Lunawat, Anindita Pal |
| Topics | Strategy, Tech for business |
| Statistics | |
| Article Size | words |
| Diagrams | Yes |
| Downloadable Version | Yes |
| Reviewers | |
| Page Owner | Nikolay Sidelnikov |
| Summary Author | Nikolay Sidelnikov |
Abstract
The article "The big product and platform shift: Five actions to get the transformation right" by McKinsey explains how to remain competitive at a time when B2B and B2C customers have high and rapidly changing expectations and digital disruptors are upending the business landscape.
Analysis of top performing companies performed by McKinsey shows that the key to is adopting a technology operating model based on products and platforms. The article explains key pillars of this approach in details:
1. How to build product teams around the end-user experience: in a product and platform operating model, “products” are the technology-enabled offerings—tools, services, or experiences—that allow customers and employees to engage in activities that create value.
2. Why platforms are so important: platform teams focus on making a company’s core systems more accessible, reusable, and better able to support products. Ignoring platforms often results in greater technical debt.
You can read more about business impact of technical debt in these articles:
3. How to make product and platform teams autonomous due to reinventing tech funding: providing product and platform teams with reasonable autonomy requires a flexible but disciplined governance model, so the article gives some recommendations on this topic.
4. How to establish joint accountability between tech and the business: the main goal of a product and platform transformation is to generate the biggest impact for the business. That requires the IT function to work much more closely with the business and include all functional stakeholders—sales, marketing, supply chain, and customer service.
5. Why it is so important to commit to creating a great developer experience: committing to engineering excellence is about more than hiring great engineers. It’s about creating an environment where engineers can thrive by doing work of the highest value, using advanced tools and relying on automation across software development to reduce toil. McKinsey also gives some general recommendations on this topic.