| |DECEMBER 202319CIOReviewSo, now that we don't have a go-live date (because we're product-centric, not project), where everything needs to be ready because we're managing the long-term, we can plan a first partial delivery to validate the hypothesis, get feedback, and develop our product to a second incremental step. Having periodic and frequent deliveries will be beneficial in a number of scenarios: generated value can be confirmed or the roadmap could be adjusted, the risk is reduced since the number of changes introduced at every iteration is smaller, feedback on ways of working can be applied to maximize efficiency and team well-being, and finally, customer's needs are more easily fulfilled.A key role in this transformation is the Digital Product Manager (Product Owner in some organizations). The main purpose of this role is to have a permanent focus on the product, and especially, on the problem that should be solved. This is a hybrid role that must navigate between business functional understanding and technical delivery. Digital Product Manager must create genuine connections with business stakeholders to capture the value to be delivered and then work with technical roles to translate them into features. It also has to create certain conditions that will allow the team to feel they're solving a problem, not simply coding specs. Some of the required soft skills for a DPM would be Passion for the product and its customers; Transparency to build genuine connections with stakeholders that we previously described; Curiosity to stay connected with new market or tech trends that would increase value for his/her product.A common discussion is the possible allocation of all of these roles: IT? Functional business areas? A specific area? I personally envision an opportunity for all of us, to play the CIO role: If we believe DPM will bring value to the company and our customers, let's start working on it little by little, however, without hesitation. Consider DPM as our product, building a first version of it and evolving the concept together with business, if long-term the digital product managers are transferred to other areas or a new area is created, It's fine: the company will be embracing the concept and IT will be perceived as the key enabler for its transformation.Digital Transformation is bringing an excellent opportunity for IT departments to shine and show real value for their organization to evolve current business models into others that will maximize value for customers. Hence, adapting traditional ways of working into more collaborative and reducing risk through frequent incremental deliveries. Pivoting to Digital Product Management could help develop the existing IT functional roles to transform IT departments and become the Digital Transformation enabler, which all companies are looking for. Xavier Serres Escoda
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