Productizing an initiative by simplifying complex concepts and crafting function-specific value propositions.

It can take a long time to introduce and establish complex concepts in an organization, especially if the organization has been successful and faces no direct external pressure to improve. It takes even longer when great ideas are improperly marketed internally, or are treated as a long-running project with no clear iterations.

Such was the situation faced by the original cross-functional, cross-BU team managing an initiative on improving product development projects through the introduction of structured Requirements Engineering & Management. The initiative had been running for longer than seven years. Despite numerous pilot projects, it was suffering from a lot of skepticism and even cynicism among different functions, partly due to the nature of the topic itself, and partly due to the way in which the initiative had been launched and promoted.

A situation analysis revealed that different parts of the organization, and even different parts of a single business unit, were at different phases of the hype cycle, with an overall lack of clarity of the initiative’s purpose. The 7 principles helped our reshuffled team to understand stakeholders’ needs, and to treat the initiative like an internal business model, with its own key activities, channels and relationships with “customers” in the very different segments of the functions of project management, engineering, supply chain, marketing and quality management.

The hesitation to try out the initiative’s ideas was greatly reduced, thanks to simplifying and adapting the initiative’s ideas to each business unit’s context, and crafting sharp value propositions for each key function. The accompanying reboot of the initiative resulted in a smooth roll-out in multiple business units, and renewed momentum after years of stagnation.