Is the product operating model in place, or only on the org chart?
An organisation can appoint Product Managers, rename its teams and redraw the org chart, and still fund, approve and staff the work the way it did before. The Governance Diagnostic tests which of the two an organisation has.
It is Appendix A of Evolve: The Operating Model AI Demands. Its 36 questions follow the order of the book, from investment governance and team accountability to AI governance and the transition itself. An executive can answer every one from their own position, without commissioning a review or watching teams work. Answer each question from how the governance machinery operates in your organisation today, whatever the documentation says.
Four commitments, scored separately
22 of the 36 questions test one of the four commitments the book sets out in Chapter 15:
- One point of accountability. One person holds ongoing authority over what a product team works on and what gets released.
- Persistent teams, outcome funding. The team that commits to an outcome stays to bear the consequences, and its funding is tied to that outcome.
- Consumption-speed finance. Finance reports spending against the evidence the portfolio review needs, at the pace the money is spent.
- From order-taker to order-maker. The technology function solves the business’s problems instead of collecting its requirements.
The diagnostic below scores your answers as a share for each commitment. The lowest share marks the commitment most likely to be missing, whatever the transition plan says. A clean result on three does not make up for a missing fourth: each commitment fails without the others, and the failure that follows is the one the missing commitment existed to prevent.
Get this report as a PDF
Enter your name and work email and we email you the PDF of this report straight away. It shows how established each commitment is, with one action for each commitment that is emerging, early or not yet in place.
Up to three short follow-up emails come after it, each on acting on the commitment your answers show as least established. If you are new to our list, Mailchimp first sends a separate email asking you to confirm your address for those.
Running it with a leadership team
The worksheet below has the same 36 questions on paper, with a scoring page. Have each executive answer on their own copy before an offsite. In the room, spend the time on the questions where the answers differ, and find out which part of the organisation each answer describes. Score the agreed answers together and decide which commitment to work on first.
Repeat the diagnostic after a quarter of Sprint Reviews. The answers that change show which commitments are now operating.
Each question points to a chapter
The Ch column on the worksheet names the chapter that makes the full argument behind each question. Chapter 1 is free to read on Google Books: Read Chapter 1. The book is available as an ebook on Google Play and Amazon Kindle.
