One or two products?
Together with Scrum teams working on two separate products, I am currently trying to figure out whether we have one or two products. We have one team working on a website and another team working on an app. The teams are growing fast and will likely be split into several teams for each product in a not too distant future. The primary goals of the website and the app are different. However, the question whether a feature or solution to a customer problem should go into the website or the app often pops up. Also the question of which product to invest in. We also have architectural dependencies between the products. These types of questions continuously generate issues since the products belong to two different appartments and we lack sufficient collaboration at a managerial level and between the Scrum teams.
It seems to me that there are advantages in terms of prioritizaion and collaboration (and being able to utilize a framework such as Nexus for scaling) if we chose to regard the website and the app as the same product. From a customer perspective they are part of the same CX. At the same time, the business objectives and customer value they provide are quite different.
What would be your advice on this?
1. Are we dealing wth one or two products
2. If we have two products, how should we align between them in an agile way. (My thinking is that we need some kind of program or portfolio management [and this is also an advice I have received here previously, in another thread], however I lack experience of this in an agile context, and am not sure how such an organization would look and work)
I would be very greatful for any light you could shed on this.
It seems to me that there are advantages in terms of prioritizaion and collaboration (and being able to utilize a framework such as Nexus for scaling) if we chose to regard the website and the app as the same product.
Think of it the other way round. Scaling ought to be a last resort. The first option should be to descale the challenge, so any one product is developed by just one or two teams.
From a customer perspective they are part of the same CX. At the same time, the business objectives and customer value they provide are quite different.
A Product Owner should be able to maximize the value of a product, and account for it to stakeholders. Would having one product, or two, facilitate ownership most effectively?
1. Are we dealing with one or two products
It sounds like you may have product variants. If you consider them two separate products you still have the challenge of the architectural dependencies that you've mentioned.
Have the teams explored any ways to reduce or eliminate these dependencies should the decision be made to treat them as separate products?