Escaping the Build Trap
About this book
Perri names the pattern where organisations measure success in features shipped rather than problems solved, then works through what replaces it. You get a product role defined by outcomes, a strategy framework she calls the Product Kata, and the organisational structures and incentives that either support or undermine it. The middle section follows a fictional company through the change. Closing chapters cover the finance, incentive and leadership practices that let the change hold.
Description via Product Digest.
Topics
Related concepts
- Prioritising with market dataRanking requirements on evidence of how many people have the problem and how urgent it is, so the order can be defended without anyone raising their voice.
- Market-driven product managementDecisions made from evidence gathered outside the building rather than from opinion gathered inside it, and the specific habits that produce that evidence.
- Product vision and what counts as a productA product is a vehicle to deliver value with a clear boundary, known stakeholders and well-defined users or customers.
- Measuring valueValue is established by evidence rather than assertion, and the Increment is what makes it inspectable.
- Product discovery and validating assumptionsEvery backlog item carries an assumption that someone wants it. Discovery finds the assumptions, validation buys evidence, and the choice of technique is a trade between cost and quality of learning.
- Product profitabilityWatching how the product performs in the market, what it costs the company to run, and what it contributes to profit, after the launch has stopped being news.
- Evidence-Based ManagementScrum.org's framework for measuring value, built on four Key Value Areas and a goal structure that turns strategy into a sequence of experiments.
- Self-managementThe Scrum Team decides who does what, when and how, and the Scrum Master's job is to make that possible rather than to direct it.
- Good Strategy vs Bad Strategy: How to Review a Product StrategyRecognise vague language, avoided problems, goals presented as strategy and objectives that cannot guide work. Includes a practical document review.
- Project vs Product Funding: Choose Budgets That Support StrategyCompare project, product, rolling and staged funding. Define spending limits, evidence reviews and decision authority without losing financial control.
- Outcome and outputOutput is what the team produced. Outcome is what changed for someone because of it. A product owner is accountable for the second and is usually measured on the first.
- Who Owns Product Strategy? Roles, Decision Rights and ApprovalDefine who develops, approves and carries out a product strategy. Includes a decision rights example and a practical strategy approval record.
- Product Strategy Stack: Connect Company Strategy, Roadmaps and GoalsUse the five layers of the product strategy stack to check alignment and diagnose gaps between company direction and product work.
- Choosing a product metricDeriving a measure from the claim a product strategy makes, the goal, driver and guardrail roles a measure can play, the five tests a candidate has to pass before a team commits a quarter to it, and the two failure modes that leave a team steering by a number it cannot use.