Organization's Response to Customers' Needs

As you should remember, earlier in this course I suggested forming an organizational structure as a hierarchical context map (see Organizations, Subdomains, and Microservices). This section will base solutions on that concept, so make sure to read the mentioned lesson before proceeding further.

From customer interview to organizational transformation

Sometimes, customer interviews hint at minor fixes within a product; in other cases, new insight has a significant impact on the existing organizational structure. Let us consider a finding that crosses a single development team’s competencies, such as a necessity to alter a high-level strategy or a program. When such a discovery puts our project upside-down or demands to change almost everything the company does, we are tempted to believe that findings are inaccurate or irrelevant. By doing so, we may stay in our comfort zone for a while, but we risk missing users’ expectations and increasing a sunk cost and losing to competition. If we do not transform now, we can achieve failure in response to our hard work.

Therefore, insights from customer interviews must be converted into strategic action items and applied to an enterprise’s hierarchical context map. Recall that I suggested forming organizational structure from top to bottom; information also flows in the same direction throughout its existence. Following the same principle, we must apply changes at a given point in a hierarchy and transform the structure underneath. In other words, transformation must be top-down and not bottom-up.

It is easier said than done to transform a functioning part of an enterprise based on a newly found insight, but that is the whole point of being a successful, agile organization. When market conditions change, you need the flexibility to adjust; the more often you do it, the more comfortable it is next time. After each successful transformation of the enterprise, you win against the competition, so it is worth the trouble no matter what. ...