Deliver Digital Products at Scale | Info-Tech Research Group

Digital product delivery is shifting from large-scale initiatives to smaller, continuous releases. However, many organizations still operate with legacy project structures that struggle to keep pace with today’s rapidly evolving IT landscape. Product teams may be effective in isolation, but their efforts are often disconnected from the needs of the organization. This blueprint will help you scale digital product delivery by organizing products into operationally aligned families that are directly tied to organizational strategy.

Though the need for agility is increasing, most product teams face challenges due to fragmented ownership, unclear priorities, and poor alignment with strategic goals. To meet evolving organizational needs, product leaders must move beyond team-level success and organize delivery around product families to enable coordination, alignment, and value delivery at scale.

1. See the forest and the trees.

Don’t get stuck at the product level. To ensure your products support organizational goals, you must take an enterprise view and organize delivery around clearly defined product families – not individual products. This structure will align product managers’ efforts with organizational strategy and empower product owners to drive focused, measurable impact.

2. Make sure your products do what you need them to.

A well-defined product hierarchy can turn abstract goals into tangible delivery outcomes. By linking product-level capabilities to overall strategic priorities, organizations can steer development efforts with greater clarity and confidence.

3. Put product owners in charge.

Despite their central importance, product owners’ roles remain poorly defined – they are often treated as simple task managers when they should be empowered as strategic leaders. With the right support, they can serve as the bridge between customer needs, operational realities, and delivery teams to ensure continuous value generation.

Use this step-by-step blueprint to align product delivery with organizational goals

Our step-by-step research offers multiphased guidance along with workbooks, templates, and other tools to realign your product structure with your organizational strategy. Use this practical, hands-on approach to scale digital delivery and embed organizational value into every product decision.

Become a product-centric organization by understanding the organizational factors driving product-centric delivery and establishing a product inventory.
Organize your products into product families by defining your scaling goals and mapping out your product family areas.
Ensure alignment between products and families by leveraging and configuring product family roadmaps and managing stakeholders.
Establish effective product governance by setting target maturity levels, clarifying accountability, identifying your governance operating model, and defining what governance success looks like.
Bridge the gap between product families and delivery by assessing delivery readiness and options and determining how delivery is to be funded.
Build your transformation roadmap and communication plan by introducing your digital product family strategy to key stakeholders.

Deliver Digital Products at Scale Research & Tools

1. Deliver Digital Products at Scale – A step-by-step guide to scaling digital product delivery through product families.

Use this comprehensive blueprint for actionable insights and step-by-step guidance to take a family-based approach to scaling digital product delivery.

Align product delivery with enterprise priorities.
Follow structured phases to organize products into families and define scaling principles.
Leverage scenarios, patterns, and exercises to create a model that fits your organization.

2. Digital Product Family Strategy Playbook – A presentation template for communicating your digital product strategy.

Use this presentation template to record and organize your findings into an actionable plan.

Summarize your strategy, product family design, and alignment with organizational goals.
Share a cohesive narrative with decision makers to secure buy-in.
Establish a clear vision for scaling digital product delivery across the organization.

3. Deliver Digital Products at Scale Workbook – A hands-on workbook to capture outputs of blueprint activities as you complete them.

Use this workbook as a repository for all your findings as you work through each step of this blueprint.

Document the outcome of all exercises and activities.
Customize and update the workbook to correspond to your organization’s unique situation.
Plan workshop agendas as you proceed through each phase.

4. Product Governance Playbook – An easy-to-use framework for defining robust guardrails to ensure effective product delivery.

Use this template to outline a clear system of ownership and accountability for your products as you implement a family-based structure.

Clearly define what product governance means for your organization.
Clarify ownership at product and family levels to avoid ambiguity.
Define governance maturity, operating models, and success measures.

5. Deliver Digital Products at Scale Readiness Assessment – An evaluation tool to assess your organization’s maturity.

Use this Excel-based assessment to measure your organization’s current readiness across key product delivery dimensions.

Diagnose strengths and gaps in product practices according to six criteria.
Identify improvement areas to prioritize.
Use the results to build consensus around maturity scoring with your leadership team.

6. Capture Your Product Family Structures Template – A visual template that illustrates your product family hierarchy and clarifies accountability.

Use this simple flowchart template to clearly map the structure and ownership of your product families and individual product levels.

Map your product families and define who owns each product or family.
Provide transparency into ownership and accountability across teams.
Create a single reference point for portfolio structure that aligns delivery to strategy.

Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

9.3/10

Overall Impact

$68,314

Average $ Saved

50

Average Days Saved

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Testimonial

The University Of Manchester

Guided Implementation

10/10

$101K

23

Hans is knowledgeable and experienced with a deep understanding of product management and wider digital transformation strategies. The best part of... Read More

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat - Data and Digital Policy Sector

Guided Implementation

10/10

$50,000

100

You covered the material I needed introduced. Everything you brought up in the call was helpful. I especially like the flexibility to working on st... Read More

Ecco

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

1

Medical Protection Society

Guided Implementation

7/10

$85,500

50

All good. We need to do more prep on topics of interest at out side to get the most out of this valuable service.

Canada School of Public Service

Guided Implementation

10/10

$1,500

3

Alfred H. Knight Holding

Guided Implementation

10/10

$171K

120

Hans is great. The materials and advice gives us a head start and ensures we're right on track. Going off track on expensive projects can be.... ex... Read More

CGIAR

Workshop

10/10

N/A

50

great value workshop and amazing facilitator

Utah Valley University

Guided Implementation

10/10

$32,499

20

Hans did an amazing job both answering the ad hoc questions and ensuring we got through the material we NEEDED to receive to meet our goals for the... Read More

X4 Pharmaceuticals

Guided Implementation

10/10

$62,999

20

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Workshop: Deliver Digital Products at Scale

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Become a Product-Centric Organization

The Purpose

Define products in your organization’s context and explore product families as a way to organize products at scale.

Key Benefits Achieved

An understanding of the case for product practices
A concise definition of products and product families

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Understand your organizational factors driving product-centric delivery.

Organizational drivers and goals for a product-centric delivery

1.2

Establish your organization’s product inventory.

Definition of product

1.3

Determine your approach to scale product families.

Product scaling principles

1.4

Define your product families

Scaling approach and direction Pilot list of products to scale

Module 2: Ensure Alignment Between Products and Families

The Purpose

To strengthen product family roadmap communication and alignment through stakeholder engagement and clear value definition.

Key Benefits Achieved

Improved stakeholder communication through a structured engagement plan.
Clear, consistent product family roadmaps that reflect business value.
Stronger alignment between individual products and their product families.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Leverage product family roadmaps

Current approach for communication of product family strategy

2.2

Use stakeholder management to improve roadmap communication

List of product family stakeholders and a prioritization plan for communication

2.3

Configure your product family roadmaps

Defined key pieces of a product family roadmap

2.4

Confirm product family to product alignment

An approach to confirming alignment between products and product families through a shared definition of business value

Module 3: Establish Effective Product Governance

The Purpose

This phase enables your organization to align on a shared definition of product governance, assess current and target maturity levels, and understand the key tasks and risks associated with advancing. It clarifies roles, responsibilities, and accountability to ensure strong ownership of product governance. Additionally, it helps you discover your product governance operating model and establish success metrics grounded in both qualitative and quantitative measures.

Key Benefits Achieved

Achieve organizational alignment on a shared and clear definition of product governance.
Gain insight into current and target maturity levels to guide improvement efforts.
Clarify roles, responsibilities, and accountability to strengthen ownership of product governance activities.
Identify your best-fit product governance operating model.
Identify the right success metrics to measure progress.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Define product governance

Alignment on what product governance means for your organization

3.2

Understand your current and target maturity level

Your baseline and target maturity levels

3.3

Clarify accountability

Your team's roles and accountability

3.4

Identify your product governance operating model

Understand your operating model for product governance

3.5

Define product governance success

Identify your product governance success metrics

Module 4: Bridge the Gap Between Product Families and Delivery

The Purpose

Define how your organization will deliver product families by assessing readiness, selecting a delivery model, and planning communication and next steps.

Key Benefits Achieved

Clear operating and delivery model aligned to your organization’s maturity
Defined roadmap and funding approach to guide transformation
Structured communication plan and next steps to launch the strategy

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Assess your organization’s delivery readiness

Assessment results on your organization’s delivery maturity

4.2

Understand your delivery options

A preferred approach to structuring product delivery

4.3

Determine your operating model

Your preferred operating model for delivering product families

4.4

Identify how to fund product delivery

4.5

Learn how to introduce your digital product family strategy

Product family transformation roadmap

4.6

Communicate changes on updates to your strategy.

Your plan for communicating your roadmap

4.7

Determine your next steps

List of actionable next steps to start on your journey

Module 5: Advisory: Next Steps and Follow-Up (post-workshop)

The Purpose

Advance the product family operating model through communication, pilot evaluation, and targeted support.

Key Benefits Achieved

Clear organizational understanding of product families and roadmaps
Refined transformation roadmap based on pilot insights
Targeted support to strengthen product ownership and planning

Activities

Outputs

5.1

Execute communication plan and product family changes

Organizational communication of product families and product family roadmaps

5.2

Review the pilot family implementation and update the transformation roadmap

Product family implementation and updated transformation roadmap

5.3

Begin advisory calls for related blueprints

Support for product owners, backlog and roadmap management, and other topics

Deliver Digital Products at Scale

Deliver value at the scale of your organization through defining enterprise product families.

Analyst Perspective

Product families align enterprise goals to product changes and value realization.

Our world is changing faster than ever, and the need for business agility continues to grow. Organizations are shifting from long-term project delivery to smaller, iterative product delivery models to be able to embrace change and respond to challenges and opportunities faster.

Unfortunately, many organizations focus on product delivery at the tactical level. Product teams may be individually successful, but how well are their changes aligned to division and enterprise goals and priorities?

Grouping products into operationally aligned families is key to delivering the right value to the right stakeholders at the right time.

Product families translate enterprise goals, constraints, and priorities down to the individual product level so product owners can make better decisions and more effectively manage their roadmaps and backlogs. By scaling products into families and using product family roadmaps to align product roadmaps, product owners can deliver the capabilities that allow organizations to reach their goals.

In this blueprint, we’ll provide the tools and guidance to help you define what “product” means to your organization, use scaling patterns to build product families, align product and product family roadmaps, and identify impacts to your delivery and organizational design models.

Banu Raghuraman, Ari Glaizel, Hans Eckman, and Pooja Khandelwal
Applications Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

Deliver Digital Products at Scale

Deliver value at the scale of your organization through defining enterprise product families.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Executive summary

Your Challenge

Common Obstacles

Info-Tech’s Approach

Products are the lifeblood of an organization. They deliver the capabilities needed to deliver value to customers, internal users, and stakeholders.
The shift to becoming a product organization is intended to continually increase the value you provide to the broader organization as you grow and evolve.
You need to clearly convey the direction and strategy of your product portfolio to gain alignment, support, and funding from your organization.

IT organizations are traditionally organized to deliver initiatives in specific periods of time. This conflicts with product delivery, which continuously delivers value over the lifetime of a product.
Delivering multiple products together creates additional challenges because each product has its own pedigree, history, and goals.
Product owners struggle to prioritize changes to deliver product value. This creates a gap and conflict between product and enterprise goals.

Info-Tech’s approach will guide you through:

Understanding the importance of product families in scaling product delivery.
Defining products in your context and organizing products into operational families.
Using product family roadmaps to align product roadmaps to enterprise goals and priorities.
Evaluating the different approaches to improve your product family delivery pipelines and milestones.
Developing a product governance framework to align on a shared definition, target maturity level, task ownership, operating model, and success metrics.

Info-Tech Insight

Changes can only be made at the individual product or service level. To achieve enterprise goals and priorities, organizations need to organize and scale products into operational families. This structure allows product managers to translate goals and constraints to the product level and allows product owners to deliver changes that support enabling capabilities. In this blueprint, we’ll help you define your products, scale them using the best patterns, and align your roadmaps and delivery models to improve throughput and value delivery.

Your product transformation journey

1. Make the Case for Product Delivery
Align your organization with the practices to deliver what matters most

2. Lead and Manage Product Owners
One-day executive workshop: Align and prepare your leadership

3. Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision
Enhance product backlogs, roadmapping, and strategic alignment

4. Deliver Digital Products at Scale - We are here
Scale product families to align enterprise goals

5. Mature and Scale Product Ownership
Assess and develop your product owners

Info-Tech’s approach

Operationally align product delivery to enterprise goals.

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram that demonstrates Info-Tech's approach.

The Info-Tech difference:

Start by piloting product families to determine which approaches work best for your organization.
Create a common definition of what a product is and identify products in your inventory.
Use scaling patterns to build operationally aligned product families.
Develop a roadmap strategy to align families and products to enterprise goals and priorities.
Use products and families to evaluate delivery and organizational design improvements.

The image contains a screenshot of the thought model on Deliver Digital Products at Scale via Enterprise Product Families.

Product does not mean the same thing to everyone

Do not expect a universal definition of products.
Every organization and industry has a different definition of what a product is. Organizations structure their people, processes, and technologies according to their definition of the products they manage. Conflicting product definitions between teams increase confusion and misalignment of product roadmaps.

“A product [is] something (physical or not) that is created through a process and that provides benefits to a market.”
– Mike Cohn, Founding Member of Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance

“A product is something ... that is created and then made available to customers, usually with a distinct name or order number.”
– TechTarget

“A product is the physical object ... , software or service from which customer gets direct utility plus a number of other factors, services, and perceptions that make the product useful, desirable [and] convenient.”
– Mark Curphey

Organizations need a common understanding of what a product is and how it pertains to the business.

This understanding needs to be accepted across the organization.

“There is not a lot of guidance in the industry on how to define [products]. This is dangerous because what will happen is that product backlogs will be formed in too many areas. All that does is create dependencies and coordination across teams … and backlogs.”
– Chad Beier, "How Do You Define a Product?”, Scrum.org

What is a product?

“A tangible solution, tool, or service (physical or digital) that enables the long-term and evolving delivery of value to customers and stakeholders based on business and user requirements.”

Info-Tech Insight

A proper definition of product recognizes three key facts:

Products are long-term endeavors that don’t end after the project finishes.
Products are not just “apps” but can be software or services that drive the delivery of value.
There is more than one stakeholder group that derives value from the product or service.

Products and services share the same foundation and best practices

For the purpose of this blueprint, product/service and product owner/service owner are used interchangeably. Product is used for consistency but would apply to services as well.

Product = Service

“Product” and “service” are terms that each organization needs to define to fit its culture and customers (internal and external). The most important aspect is consistent use and understanding of:

External products
Internal products
External services
Internal services
Products as a service (PaaS)
Productizing services (SaaS)

Recognize the different product owner perspectives

Technical
IT systems and tools

Business
Customer facing, revenue generating

Operations
Keep the lights on processes

Info-Tech Best Practice
Product owners must translate needs and constraints from their perspective into the language of their audience. Kathy Borneman, Digital Product Owner at SunTrust Bank, noted the challenges of finding a common language between lines of business and IT (e.g. what is a unit?).

Info-Tech Insight
Recognize that product owners represent one of three primary perspectives. Although all share the same capabilities, how they approach their responsibilities is influenced by their perspective.

“A Product Owner in its most beneficial form acts like an Entrepreneur, like a 'mini-CEO'. The Product Owner is someone who really 'owns' the product.”
– Robbin Schuurman,
“Tips for Starting Product Owners”

Identify the differences between a project-centric and a product-centric organization

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram to help identify the differences between a project-centric and a product-centric organization.

Info-Tech Insight
Product delivery requires significant shifts in the way you complete development work and deliver value to your users. Make the changes that support improving end-user value and enterprise alignment.

Projects can be a mechanism for delivering product changes and improvements

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram on projects being a mechanism for delivering product changes and improvements.

Projects within products

Regardless of whether you recognize yourself as a product-based or project-based shop, the same basic principles should apply.

The purpose of projects is to deliver the scope of a product release. The shift to product delivery leverages a product roadmap and backlog as the mechanism for defining and managing the scope of the release.

Eventually, teams progress to continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) where they can release on demand or as scheduled, requiring org change management.

Define product value by aligning backlog delivery with roadmap goals

In each product plan, the backlogs show what you will deliver. Roadmaps identify when and in what order you will deliver value, capabilities, and goals.

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram that demonstrates product backlog and product roadmap.

Product roadmaps guide delivery and communicate your strategy

In Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision, we demonstrate how the product roadmap is core to value realization. The product roadmap is your communicated path, and as a product owner, you use it to align teams and changes to your defined goals while aligning your product to enterprise goals and strategy.

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram that demonstrates a product roadmap.

Info-Tech Insight
The quality of your product backlog – and your ability to realize business value from your delivery pipeline – is directly related to the input, content, and prioritization of items in your product roadmap.

Use Agile DevOps principles to expedite product-centric delivery and management

Delivering products does not necessarily require an Agile DevOps mindset. However, Agile methods facilitate the journey because product thinking is baked into them.

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram on Agile DevOps principles.
Based on: Ambysoft, 2018

Organizations start with Waterfall to improve the predictable delivery of product features.

Iterative development shifts the focus from delivery of features to delivery of user value.

Agile further shifts delivery to consider ROI. Often, the highest-value backlog items aren’t the ones with the highest ROI.

Lean and DevOps improve your delivery pipeline by providing full integration between product owners, development teams, and operations.

CI/CD reduces time in process by allowing release on demand and simplifying release and support activities.

Although teams will adopt parts of all these stages during their journey, it isn’t until you’ve adopted a fully integrated delivery chain that you’ve become product-centric.

Scale products into related families to improve value delivery and alignment

Defining product families builds a network of related products into coordinated value delivery streams.

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram on scaling products into related families.

“As with basic product management, scaling an organization is all about articulating the vision and communicating it effectively. Using a well-defined framework helps you align the growth of your organization with that of the company. In fact, how the product organization is structured is very helpful in driving the vision of what you as a product company are going to do.”

– Rich Mironov, Mironov Consulting

Product families translate enterprise goals into value-enabling capabilities

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram on product families translate enterprise goals into value-enabling capabilities.

Info-Tech Insight
Your organizational goals and strategy are achieved through capabilities that deliver value. Your product hierarchy is the mechanism to translate enterprise goals, priorities, and constraints down to the product level where changes can be made.

Arrange product families by operational groups, not solely by your org chart

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram that demonstrates arrange product families by operational groups, not solely by your org chart.

Leverage patterns for scaling products

Organizing your products and families is easier when leveraging these grouping patterns.

Value Stream Alignment	Enterprise Applications	Shared Services	Technical	Organizational Alignment
Business architecture Value stream Capability Function Market/customer segment Line of business (LoB) Example: Customer group > value stream > products Best-Fit Models: Embedded Exponential IT Model, Shifted Line of Business, Embedded Geography	Enabling capabilities Enterprise platforms Supporting apps Example: HR > Workday/Peoplesoft > Modules Supporting: Job board, healthcare administrator Best-Fit Models: Shifted Product Aligned, Centralized Demand-Develop-Service, Centralized Plan-Build-Run	Organization of related services into service family Direct hierarchy does not necessarily exist within the family Examples: End-user support and ticketing, workflow and collaboration tools Best-Fit Models: Shifted Service Aligned, Shifted Product, Centralized Demand-Develop Service, Centralized- Plan Build Run	Domain grouping of IT infrastructure, platforms, apps, skills, or languages Often used in combination with Shared Services grouping or LoB-specific apps Examples: Java, .NET, low-code, database, network Best-Fit Models: Shifted Service Aligned, Shifted Product Aligned, Shifted, Line of Business, Centralized Demand-Develop Service	Used at higher levels of the organization where products are aligned under divisions Separation of product managers from organizational structure no longer needed because the management team owns product management role Best-Fit Models: Shifted Product Aligned, Shifted Line of Business Aligned, Embedded Exponential IT

Deliver value at the scale of your organization through defining enterprise product families.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Guided Implementation 1: Become a Product-Centric Organization

Call 1: Define your objectives and challenges.
Call 2: Define products and product families in your context.
Call 3: Understand the list of products in your context.

Guided Implementation 2: Organize Products Into Product Families

Call 1: Define your scaling principles and goals.
Call 2: Select a pilot and define your product families.

Guided Implementation 3: Ensure Alignment Between Products and Families

Call 1: Use family roadmaps as a method to align priorities.
Call 2: Define the components of product family roadmaps.

Guided Implementation 4: Establish Effective Product Governance

Call 1: Define product governance and clarify accountability.
Call 2: Identify your product governance operating model.

Guided Implementation 5: Bridge the Gap Between Product Families and Delivery

Call 1: Assess your delivery readiness.
Call 2: Improve product delivery and funding models.

Guided Implementation 6: Build Your Transformation Roadmap and Communication Plan

Call 1: Build your transformation plan.

Authors

Hans Eckman

Pooja Khandelwal

Ari Glaizel

Banu Raghuraman

Contributors

Emily Archer, Lead Business Analyst, Enterprise Consulting, authentic digital agency
David Berg, Founder & CTO, Strainprint Technologies Inc.
Kathy Borneman, Digital Product Owner, SunTrust Bank
Charlie Campbell, Product Owner, Merchant e-Solutions
Yarrow Diamond, Sr. Director, Business Architecture, Financial Services
Cari J. Faanes-Blakey, CBAP, PMI-PBA, Enterprise Business Systems Analyst, Vertex, Inc.
Kieran Gobey, Senior Consultant Professional Services, Blueprint Software Systems
Rupert Kainzbauer, VP Product, Digital Wallets, Paysafe Group
Saeed Khan, Founder, Transformation Labs
Hoi Kun Lo, Product Owner, Nielsen
Abhishek Mathur, Sr Director, Product Management, Kasisto, Inc.
Jeff Meister, Technology Advisor and Product Leader
Vincent Mirabelli, Principal, Global Project Synergy Group
Oz Nazili, VP, Product & Growth, TWG
Mark Pearson, Principal IT Architect, First Data Corporation
Brenda Peshak, Product Owner, Widget Industries, LLC
Mike Starkey, Director of Engineering, W.W. Grainger
Anant Tailor, Co-founder & Head of Product, Dream Payments Corp.
Angela Weller, Scrum Master, Businessolver
Monica Zapatka, Product Owner, Travelers
12 anonymous company contributors

Search Code: 97825
Last Revised: December 4, 2025

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