State of Product Management Conference – November 16, 2018

Interview with Thomas Laffree, innovation director, PGGM

PGGM and APG recently completed the first phase of a collaborative experiment that used blockchain technology to administer pensions. Based on the prototype they co-created, both pension fund service providers have extended their research.

According to Thomas Laffree, innovation director at PGGM and one of the project leaders, the potential impact of blockchain technology on the pension domain is massive. “By working together to develop proof of concepts and getting our heads around this exciting new technology, we’re investigating the true potential of blockchain”.

Tokens and Smart Contracts Redesign Existing Supply Chains

The rise of the internet and big data unleashed public access to a torrent of information. Blockchain is the next wave of this technological revolution. It took some time for the market to embrace the possibilities of the internet and big data, during which, they evolved and matured. The same phenomenon is happening with blockchain.

This article interprets and compares blockchain to the rise of the internet and big data and explains the core elements of its application. It also looks at its potential impact on society.

Riding the waves of agility, rapid software development and customer centricity, digital product management is increasingly taking over waterfall-like processes. The shift from traditional to digital product management is well explained by the crucial change of the product lifecycle in the digital era. With a shorter time to market, increasing customer demands and the constant availability of information and platforms to make purchase decisions, companies are facing an immense field of competition. This leaves many organizations with the challenge to adopt a digital product mindset to deliver fast and great customer experiences.

Digital product management is greatly influenced by changes in technology, society and marketplaces. In this article, I will zoom in on the trending topics that currently define, influence and shape the practice of digital product management in 2017.

Are you the CEO of your company? At least imagine this for a minute! How would you lead your organisation into a bright future with success and happiness for your customers, employees and yourself? You need to accelerate into the right direction. But what is your right direction?

To help you to find out the answer you should integrate three perspectives.

Being competitive isn’t about being bigger anymore; it’s about being swift and adaptable. It is not the big fish which eats the small fish; it’s the fast fish which eats the slow fish. What makes these newer players different as far as adaptability and agility go?

Most digital transformation initiatives put hard change factors, such as technology, KPIs, process, objectives and organizational structure, at the heart of their programs. These are all relevant, but if you want to create sustainable digital change and accelerate your digital business, it's people that matter most.

Agile organizations, restructuring, digital transformations and digital innovators. Popular words at management meetings and dinner and drinks conversations. Many are currently closely monitoring ING to learn from the large-scale restructuring that the bank started in 2015, and the ING ‘Agile At Scale’ model that is its centerpiece. Simultaneously, we are all working hard on making the next step of our own journey toward digital hero status. There is no holy grail or a particular journey relating to becoming a more agile and innovative organization. This is one of the key conclusions of the event ‘Spotify-ing your organization’ hosted by Xebia on 24 November 2016.

On my first day as Xebia employee I immediately got involved in a very interesting project for a customer in the financial sector. In hindsight it had almost all ingredients to be a spot-on case for our New IT paradigm. Our audit of the IT department quickly brought to light a perfect storm of ‘impediments’ this organization faced: a depricated technology stack, a silo-based waterfall culture dominated by manual hand-offs, bureaucratic process steps and ivory tower behavior, an average release cycle of multiple months, customers walking away, investors being reluctant to keep investing in the company, and on top of it, an anxious workforce with low morale and only a few experts remaining who are willing and able to reverse a downward trend.