Gartner Heralds The End Of PPM As We Know It

The shift from project-based to product-based application organisations will affect how they are governed, according to Gartner, Inc.

“Rapid evolution is coming for most application organisations,” said Matt Hotle, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “Shifts in how the business will consume applications, and the increasing demand that software delivery must not slowdown the business, are refocusing application organisations. Before, they delivered change by funding projects and were organised primarily around those projects. The coming revolution will shift the delivery metaphor from project to product.”

Today’s application organisations are taking different paths toward product-based delivery. Some organisations are on a cost reduction or reallocation road; some are attempting to create a platform of common applications; others are reeling under the fast-growing demand for new and changed functions from their business colleagues. Regardless of the path they are following, they all have the same destination: the product-based organisation.

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“To begin to understand this shift to the product-based application organisation, it’s important to understand what the ‘container’ organisations deliver,” said Hotle. “For most organisations today, that’s a project. The project is a collection of business capabilities.

Projects and products share some characteristics, but also have key differentiators. A project is a transient principle around which to organise, while a product is a long-lasting set of capabilities that has a life cycle linked tightly to the business capabilities it provides. Supporting the product life cycle drives substantial changes to funding and delivery methods, organisational structures and the relationship between the business and IT.

In a project world, the focus is on the incremental change to the business. Organisations that have succeeded in moving to an application portfolio approach, talk about an asset having a life that mirrors the business process it supports. In the product world, product life cycle management (PLM) includes the steps that take the product from idea to reality and onward through enhancement to retirement. In the application world, however, there has traditionally been a design phase, a development phase and an ongoing, seemingly endless, operation phase.

“This is the evolution of how we organise and manage the work and people in IT and application organisations. It’s a major transition, but not one that has to be made all at once,” Hotle said. “Many organisations are already on one of the roads leading to the product-based organisation. Others are taking more cautious steps. It requires a shift in interaction patterns within the business, a cultural remap of the applications organisation, a shift in the way the organisation itself is designed, and a shift in the way people are assigned to work.”