Many of today’s leaders view business digitization as essential for remaining competitive in the marketplace. This realization led to the formation of dedicated business operations, or BizOps, teams. However, those groups often find it difficult to measure the return on investment of digitization efforts or achieve the desired outcomes.

“I think a lot of us have to rewire the way we think about things, and I think at Planview, where we have a lot of customers … who operationalized that traditional [project portfolio management] world and are shifting to Agile and transforming, that rewire is super important,” said Patrick Tickle (pictured), chief product officer at Planview Inc. “You’ve got to embrace this idea of iterative, getting better every day and iterating, iterating, iterating as opposed to building annual plans.”

Tickle spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s live streaming studio, during the BizOps Manifesto Unveiled event. They discussed the value of iterating within plans spanning weeks rather than years, breaking down silos, and continuous improvement through collaboration and data-driven decisions. (* Disclosure below.)

Shifting to a team-centric culture

Tickle is one of a dozen authors of the BizOps Manifesto. It establishes declared values and principles aimed at matching software development and operations to modern business needs. People who identify with the document’s ideals can sign it online.

Besides four core values, the Manifesto includes 14 principles, many of which emphasize working together and breaking down silos.

“You’ve got to make the shift to a team-centric culture? Empowered teams, that’s a big deal,” Tickle stated. “We lived in a deep resource management world for a long, long time. A lot of our customers still do that. Moving to that team-centric world is really important and core to the trust.”

Companywide training and leadership buy-in are also crucial, according to Tickle. Provided those elements exist, companies typically see better overall outcomes.

“Once you get through a few cycles where you’ve done a pivot, or you’ve brought a new team in and it just works, it becomes kind of this virtuous circle where people go, ‘Man, this really works so much better than what we used to do,'” Tickle said.

Shifting to a product mentality is vital too. Doing that brings business and technology teams together and allows them to enhance the customer experience provided by a product or service. Being in the customer’s position affords teams a new clarity that often isn’t otherwise apparent, Tickle concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the BizOps Manifesto Unveiled event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the BizOps Manifesto Unveiled event. Neither Broadcom Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE