The Retailer Winter Edition 2023

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growth and evolution.” ‘‘

I believe that once begun, it needs to become a constant ongoing process that walks hand in hand with the company’s

Nevertheless, completing the roadmap is an essential mark in that journey. The moment when you can look back, carefully dissect the results delivered and retrospectively analyze everything with the top management and teams. Here are some key global metrics that you need to base your analysis on: • Time and money invested in the creation of an MVP and product launch • Number of clients that have been working with the product • Funds growth due to the launch of the product • The digital transformation’s ROI No company can constantly ride the wave of success in our fast-paced reality. We can see proof of that in the number of businesses that fell victim to the pandemic and the changing geopolitical situation. But, on the other hand, change always brings new opportunities, and the Product approach, with its flexibility, is a great solution to maintain the life cycle of a business and leverage them. In regards to digital transformation, I believe that once begun, it needs to become a constant ongoing process that walks hand in hand with the company’s growth and evolution.

In an ideal world, the roadmap needs to reflect the whole journey of Digital Transformation until the goal is achieved, yet in reality, it rarely remains unchanged during the entire cycle. This is why a massive advan tage of the Product Approach is that it allows a certain flexibility due to its iteration process of realization. It will enable you to move towards your goal iteration by iteration, starting with an MVP of the solution to test your hypothesis and asses the results, allowing you to correct the roadmap to remain on the right path. After all, it is better to spend a couple of weeks building an MVP to establish that a wrong direction was chosen rather than spend a year developing the complete solution only to realize that it has failed and everything was in vain. Stage 3 – Realization: The next step is bringing the roadmap to life. To do that, you need to create a specific environment: • First and foremost, you need to build a team around the product owner who will solve the tasks. The team needs to be independ ent, consist of all the required specialists, and focus on reaching the digital transformation targets. • The team needs to proceed via iterations, and ideally, after every iteration that ends with implementation or testing, metrics estab lished during the planning stage need to be analyzed. • The product owner must have the power to manage the team, the project’s budget, and the top management’s support and trust. The top managers must be confident that the set goals will be reached, and it is the product owners’ job to maintain this confidence by constantly demonstrating the delivered results. Stage 4 – Analyzing results: The end of all works and delivery of all the results written in the roadmap usually do not signify the end of the Digital Transformation. Many of my colleagues and I believe that true digital transformation is a never-ending process because the market and competition constantly evolve.

ALEX ANTONOV