Executives can gain significant strategic advantages by adopting modern IT and organizational frameworks like focusing on measures that matter, understanding Team Topologies, and shifting from a project to product mindset. These concepts move leadership focus from busywork to tangible business results, creating a more agile and effective organisation.
Focusing on measures what matter means shifting from output-based vanity metrics (like lines of code or features shipped) to outcome-based metrics that reflect true business value. For executives, this means tracking key results such as customer satisfaction, market share, revenue growth, and operational efficiency. By concentrating on these high-level indicators, leaders can make better strategic investment decisions, accurately gauge the health of the business, and ensure that technology work is directly contributing to the company's bottom line, rather than just keeping teams busy.
Team Topologies provides a powerful framework for designing an organization that can deliver software and value rapidly. It defines four fundamental team types (stream-aligned, enabling, complicated subsystem, and platform) and their interaction patterns. For an executive, this model offers a clear blueprint for structuring the organization to minimize dependencies, reduce cognitive load on teams, and accelerate the flow of work. It helps answer critical questions like "Are we structured for speed?" and "Do our teams have the support they need?" By intentionally designing the organisation around value streams, executives can break down silos and create a system where autonomous teams can innovate and deliver results with less friction.
The project to product shift fundamentally changes how work is funded, managed, and measured. Instead of funding temporary projects that are disbanded upon completion, the organization creates long-lived teams aligned to a specific product or value stream. For executives, this transition provides several key benefits. It ensures persistent ownership and accountability, leading to higher quality and better customer outcomes. It also aligns funding with business value streams rather than arbitrary project buckets, providing a clearer link between investment and return. This product-centric view allows executives to manage a portfolio of value-generating assets, making strategic pivots much easier than with a rigid, project-based approach.