Products start as ideas and dreams and evolve over time into specific, producible products. As they go through different phases of their product life cycle the product development team inevitably changes as well. Often what started as a tiny group driven by passion and a grand vision evolves--or devolves-- into an organization or a bureaucracy. Unwritten, informal processes become binders of rules, policies and procedures. Things that used to be simple to do now require levels of approval. Why? Does it have to be like that? And, can that descent be avoided?
This presentation will cover those issues and more using the sense making lens of the Cynefin Framework to show how product development naturally moves between domains and how the organizational structure changes as well. It will also cover how organizational design contributes to product success or failure using Normal Accident Theory and use the resulting insights to provide advice for how to avoid the bureaucracy traps and how to restart the cycle and recreate innovative startups within existing organizations.
