Companies are not just the sum of their parts. 

One of the concepts of lean software development is 'See the Whole'.  While one of the more abstract concepts, I believe it not only applies effectively to software development, but also at a much higher level. 

First - See the Whole, does not imply that you need to/should ignore details but more importantly be aware of temptations to optimize parts at the expense of the whole.  For instance, a common issue that befalls many a SaaS (Software as a Service) company is thinking of oneself as only a software company.  There is nothing wrong with being 'primarily' a software company but very few companies can/should claim the term only and expect to be successful. 

Even if you distinguish internally between software development and supporting/additional services, your customer likely doesn't know and/or care about the distinction.  To them, they are interacting with you (the company) - not a specific department, tool or service.   Its all part of the same experience. 

The question is then: why do we organize our business's in a way that is so counter intuitive to this?  Early stage startups often organize correctly simply due to the limited scope of offering and team size, but as a company grows and transitions, organizational silo'ing is an unfortunate side effect that is hard to prevent.  This results in teams thinking about their part of the puzzle, and less and less about the whole picture.  Even the discipline of product management falls into this trap.  Product managers in SaaS companies typically manage software products only. 

At Balihoo we have been going through a transition this year both in terms of growth and helping the organization think about our offering as a 'Whole Product'.  Our product is not just a local marketing software platform, but the the collective set of everything that our customers interact with.  Easy on the surface.  At this point our discussions are limited to a subset of the organization while we work through the execution challenges, however simply re-orienting our focusing on the whole product has already increased our ability to 'see' better.  Here are a few early examples:

• Functional managers no longer localize their thinking about their piece of the offering but often think more holistically, which drives more questions and earlier identification of issues.
• Product strategy now becomes a cross functional initiative and not just limited to the software.  In the past we would release new features in our software and then identify 'wrap around' services.  Now we think about these in advance, which creates a more well rounded product and hence a better customer experience.
• New discussions on how to expand the product roadmap beyond just a focus on the software and its upcoming features to thinking around whole product priorities.

There are still challenges. 

• Operationalizing some of these concepts could create cross functional conflict 
• It could put additional pressure on our ability to stay agile (ie - seen as overhead on process)
• It might be subject to interpretation and mean different things to different people
• It will take some work to make it tangible to everyone across the organization

Nevertheless, creating a finely tuned machine should always be an organizational goal no matter how many leaks, squeaks and gear grinding is currently happening.  Here's to Seeing the whole!


This is part of a series on thinking lean.  Previous Posts:

• Decide as Late as Possible