You're still working with lumpy projects.

The Repeatable Product Level is essentially the second stage on your journey to better product delivery, and is where you start to see a pick up in momentum.

By 'products' we mean anything that your organisation creates and manages online - like websites, apps, and software tools - that improve customer experiences, save time and money, and help grow the business!

The overall product journey consists of four key stages, and each stage is a level-up when it comes to delivering improvements that align to your organisations goals.

Projects have set timelines and deliverables, and once on the project path it becomes hard to be responsive and flex to changing needs. They also have a set scope, So when you start running behind the descoping process begins, with descoped features rarely getting the chance to be implemented in the future.

In comparison, products have a roadmap that can flex and change every month - allowing you to get improvements made more regularly and easily shift priorities as you need to. Nothing gets dropped off or descoped, it just gets shifted down the list of priorities.

The other major benefit in having a set product delivery budget for the year means you don't have to go through the budget approval process multiple times a year for each project.

The biggest challenge at this stage is the transition from project driven thinking to product driven thinking. It's a mindset change, and one you will need buy-in on from key stakeholders to truly see an impact.

We help clients solve this challenge by getting better product processes in place that help you lay out a product roadmap and get everyone aligned on where you're going and why. But we don't stop there, we help manage and deliver on that roadmap, allowing you to deliver more improvements and updates more regularly.

Staying at the Repeatable Level keeps you stuck in the old project management cycle, impacting you in many ways.

Firstly, the investment you made initially to build your website, apps, products and systems will be degrading over time as the required maintenance has probably not been kept up to date. So while you focus on tightly scoped projects to deliver on new initiatives, what you already have will be experiencing more issues.

Secondly, your backlog of non-project related requests (and previously descoped features) will just keep growing. The longer you wait, the longer it gets. If all of your time and focus is on new projects you won't have any resources or bandwidth to maximise on new opportunities that fall outside of a defined project scope.

The next level is called Defined for a reason. At this level you have a clearly defined product roadmap and have embraced continuous product delivery.

To get to this stage you need to break free from the limitations of project-based updates, and pull together a clear product roadmap that's aligned to your organisations goals. Lastly you need a team to deliver changes and improvements on a regular basis, alongside a regular maintenance plan.

Need some help? We're here to support you on this journey! Our expert team has helped many clients to keep their products running smoothly with regular maintenance and establish continuous delivery processes that set a steady momentum and start to deliver on their goals.

With a continuous delivery process in place, you become a well-oiled machine, enabling you to respond swiftly to user feedback, market trends, and emerging opportunities. It's all about staying nimble and delivering exceptional results.