Product vs. project mindset in software development

Project mindset vs. product mindset

A project mindset and a product mindset can both serve the same end goal of creating quality software. However, they approach this task in fundamentally different ways:

• A project mindset focuses on achieving predefined goals based on specific timelines. In a project mindset, the project deliverables lay the foundation for how developers and other stakeholders work.
• A product mindset prioritizes building a product that creates as much business value as possible, even if doing so requires deviating from project plans.

These differences in approach give rise to other important distinctions between project and product mindsets, including the following:

• Deliverables vs. outcomes. A project mindset focuses on implementing deliverables on time and within budget. In contrast, a product mindset emphasizes working toward positive outcomes, such as product improvement. It affords more tolerance for missing deliverables as long as the product is improving.
• Lifecycle and timeline. Project mindsets usually emphasize adherence to predefined timelines to achieve specific deliverables. In a product mindset, teams typically treat timelines as more flexible; as long as they are making changes that improve the product, they consider their work successful, even if they miss preset deadlines.
• Business-IT alignment. Projects usually come with preassembled teams of developers. This can make it harder to integrate other stakeholders, such as business users who can offer perspective on how best to implement a new feature. Excluding business users from the project at the start can lead to poor alignment between the business and the IT organization. Product mindsets are more flexible in this regard as they can more easily integrate stakeholders from outside IT.
• Job roles. Although both mindsets require code contributions from developers, there are differences in other job roles. With a project mindset, a project manager or management team usually oversees operations. With a product mindset, direction comes from a product manager.
• Scope. Projects usually have a predefined scope -- such as "implement X and Y new application features." In contrast, a product mindset encourages an open-ended, ongoing approach through which developers continuously improve the application.

Drawbacks of a project mindset

Most modern enterprise organizations have come to recognize the disadvantages of a project mindset -- namely, that everyone focuses less on the product and user needs.

A perfect project management system can complete every task and still fail when it's time to go to market. This is because a successful project does not necessarily make for a successful product.

As an example of the drawbacks of a project mindset in the real world, consider Apple, which has a history of both project and product mindsets. Some of Apple's most significant achievements -- such as the introduction and rapid early improvement of the iPhone -- stemmed from a product mindset that let the company innovate quickly and respond to user needs.

However, some critics now accuse Apple of releasing a nearly carbon-copy iPhone each year -- an approach that indicates a project mindset. According to these critics, product quality for these phones has stagnated, as Apple finishes projects with little or no consideration for product outcomes. This reliance on project-oriented thinking could leave Apple vulnerable and give another company the edge in mobile phone innovation.

Modern teams must prioritize the product while listening for shake-ups in the market. If a project takes too long and the team blindly adheres to the project timeline, the product might already be obsolete by the time the software is available to the consumer. With a product mindset, the business stays adaptable. The team constantly takes direct feedback from the target user and adjusts.

Benefits of a product mindset

The key advantage of a product mindset is that it puts the emphasis on customers and value, rather than proxy metrics and activities.

In this way, product management and delivery help enable key DevOps goals as established by Gene Kim, known as the Three Ways of DevOps:

• Flow, which prioritizes how the system -- not an individual segment -- performs.
• Feedback, which organizations use to improve products.
• Continual learning, which encourages innovation, risk and experimentation.

Organizations can't adopt a faster release cadence through just CI/CD. Instead, they must concentrate on how software development affects the business and the customer. In this way, organizations can scale the principles of DevOps to the business.

As digital-first companies such as Uber and Airbnb disrupt longstanding industries, more companies recognize the value of a product mindset. For traditional enterprise organizations, moving to product-minded development is a matter of survival.

Project mindsets involve a top-down, command-and-control approach that can put enterprise organizations at a disadvantage. Many larger companies risk falling behind if they don't adapt to the innovative approaches taken by disrupters.

Examples of a product mindset

As an example of what a product mindset looks like in practice and how it can benefit DevOps teams, imagine the following scenario.

Inspired by the buzz surrounding generative AI, an IT software vendor sets out to add a GenAI-powered capability to a monitoring tool that lets IT analysts ask questions about log files using natural language. The vendor plans to implement the feature by feeding user queries and log data into a third-party GenAI service, which will then parse log data to respond to the query. The company defines deliverables for building this integration and assigns developers to complete them.

A couple of months into the project, however, product managers receive feedback from clients that some are uncomfortable with the way the new feature is designed. It would require users to expose potentially sensitive log files to a third-party GenAI service, which some clients deem to be insecure despite the service's data security policies. In addition, the company's CFO expresses concern about the cost required to pay for the GenAI service. They are not convinced that the revenue created by the new feature will outweigh the expense.

Based on this feedback from both external and internal stakeholders, the product managers realize that the feature they are currently building is not a good fit for customer needs. Nor is it a cost-effective capability for the company to offer.

In response, they change focus. They abandon the original project deliverables and decide instead to implement the log query feature by building their own GenAI service. This approach avoids the need for customers to expose data to a third-party service. It will also save the company money in the long run because it won't have to pay for external GenAI integration.

In this scenario, a product mindset saves the DevOps team from wasting time and money on a losing feature. With a project mindset, it would have been more difficult to abandon the original deliverables and adopt a new approach.

A real-world example of a product mindset is Linux, the open source kernel operating system project. When Linux appeared in the early 1990s, few observers thought that a loosely organized group of volunteers, working without any traditional project management structures, could produce a viable product. At the time, most software was developed by commercial companies, which used a project mindset to manage the work of small teams of professional coders. Yet by the mid-1990s, Linux-based operating systems had become major competitors to proprietary alternatives such as Windows NT.

Arguably, Linux and similar open source projects accomplished this feat in large part because they were built by contributors who operated according to a product mindset. The contributors wanted to improve an open source product, and they did so by making changes that they felt would create the most value for users of the product. These users included most of the developers themselves. A project mindset, in which open source programmers worked according to rigid schedules and preplanned deliverables that risked becoming irrelevant by the time developers implemented them, would likely not have proved so effective.

The advent of Linux predated Agile and DevOps by a decade. But open source projects such as Linux provided early proof that a product mindset could result in faster, more efficient development, setting an important precedent that the Agile and DevOps movements would later endorse.

How to hire for a product mindset approach

An essential step in implementing a product mindset is making sure that a company hires for two key roles: a product manager and a product owner. Some organizations combine these roles, but there are distinct differences between a product manager and product owner.

• Product managers operate at a strategic level. They focus on long-term product strategy that the company's objectives, the product's vision, market trends and competition all determine. For commercial software, the product manager's responsibilities include marketing, sales support, budgeting, forecasting, customer care and delivery team support.
• Product owners are tactical. Part of the Scrum framework for Agile software development teams, the product owner provides direction on what developers should build based on the product's vision. The product owner creates a shared understanding between the business side and the development team. They describe and prioritize backlog items and determine satisfactory delivery.

Project-based skills have a place on Agile product teams. Project managers can become Scrum masters; business analysts can become product owners. But the shift to a product-oriented role involves more than a title change. Product-based roles require rapid and iterative delivery models and, thus, a dedicated, cross-functional team. For example, software engineers and testers often work in the same product team to ensure quick QA and feedback.

Some companies take the approach of pairing a product leader with a development leader. The two together define a product strategy and roadmap, prioritize work, define release timelines, build an investment model and take accountability for product success. This approach provides the team with clear ownership over a product and makes sure that both product management and product development are completely aligned on a plan.

6 best practices to adopt a product mindset

Beyond hiring for the right roles, here are six practical ways an organization can prioritize product over project.

1) Set clear responsibilities

Give team members clear responsibilities that align with a product mindset. Senior leaders should create teams that understand their responsibility to own the product over the long term. Product leaders should seek regular updates on strategy, as well as measure and report on the business metrics that define product success.

These teams must evaluate whether the product delivers the desired business outcome, from its initial ideation phases to an eventual decision on product end of life. Clear delineation of work is essential to avoid short- and long-term confusion.

2) Design with the customer in mind

Establish channels for constant communication with end users. The goal is always to gather customer insights through techniques such as UX monitoring, canary releases and beta testing. Product-minded teams devote a significant portion their time to understand, validate and even challenge every user insight. Organizations that use Agile or DevOps adjust their strategies according to the feedback.

Enterprise organizations must invest in qualitative and quantitative feedback to empower developers and QA teams to adjust and make decisions on the fly. Qualitative data might include satisfaction scores, feature requests, bug reports and focus groups -- these measure how a user feels about an app. Quantitative data provides objective feedback, such as load time and usage metrics. This feedback can help the organization decide whether to iterate on a feature or shelve it.

3) See the bigger picture

Each development decision affects the product. Consider the ramifications of each choice over the long term. Agile or DevOps organizations should develop and release products that are easy to test, deploy and support. If the team doesn't think about ongoing support during the build, for example, support costs will skyrocket when the product faces issues in production.

Instill a sense of product ownership in all team members. Each person should feel like they have ownership of the product.

4) Invest in organizational change

The hardest aspect of a product overhaul is getting everyone to buy in. The transition to a product mindset is a culturally challenging effort.

It requires many people to change their habits, especially people in positions of authority. Start at the top. Executives should evangelize the change, lay out a roadmap, allocate funding for training and new staff, and periodically update the organization on progress.

Next, identify the product leaders. Find progressive-thinking, product-minded people and recruit them to help lead the change. Also, invest in training. Onboarding a critical mass of employees to Agile thinking is critical for the product mindset to take root and flourish.

Don't let the organization lapse back into old, project-thinking ways. That will only leave it vulnerable to more agile, product-oriented competitors. A product transformation with many processes still mired in the project mindset will create impediments.

5) Build the right product for today

There's a big difference between project and product managers' approach to failure. Project managers try not to fail. Product managers find ways to fail fast, learn from the experience and move on. The project mindset assumes failure is expensive, so value is all about reducing cost and risk.

When it comes to building a product the right way, product-minded development teams assume the definition of "right" will change over time. The business, customers and market always evolve. Development teams build the right product for today, with the flexibility to adapt to emerging needs.

A project release attempts to cram a lot into one big burst, which carries risk. Each element in that single release raises the stakes of failure for the entire collection. Product-minded development uses shorter and iterative cycles that constant feedback guides. The product approach not only increases a team's release cadence and overall speed, but also enables testing at an earlier, less expensive stage.

Rather than fix their problems, many organizations simply dress them up. ... A product mindset requires a shift throughout the organization.

6. Fix the pig

Rather than fix their problems, many organizations simply dress them up. As the idiom goes, it's like putting lipstick on a pig. A product mindset requires a shift throughout the organization -- a holistic focus on results, not on processes.

Convince the C-suite that fixing the pig is cheaper and faster in the long run than cosmetic changes, even if it requires investment upfront. Expect pushback. Change doesn't happen overnight.

Metrics are the most important components in this product revolution. Measure success according to business goals, not IT service-level agreements. Don't settle for tracking mandated uptime. Measure metrics such as deployments per year or call center volume -- any statistics that determine product value.

Business leaders don't know -- or care -- much about specs, servers and software-defined networks. They care about business wins. So, too, must the product team. Make an effort to speak their language, and the C-suite will get on board.

Why DevOps teams favor product mindset

DevOps teams prefer a product mindset because it enables more adaptability and empowers developers to work toward whatever results in a better product, rather than achieving project goals even if those goals don't benefit the product.

Prior to widespread adoption of the Agile methodology, the project mindset reigned supreme in the world of software development. Businesses typically defined a set of changes they wanted to make to software projects, such as implementing various new features and releasing them as an updated version of an application. Then, the business would work toward them based on a prescribed timeline and using a specific team.

But times have changed. Rather than releasing new features on a periodic basis, it's common today to embrace practices such as continuous delivery and continuous improvement, which entail updating applications on a frequent, regular basis. A product mindset enables this approach because it helps teams focus on evolving software continuously over time instead of working within the confines of a rigidly defined project.

Editor's note: This article was updated in 2025 by Chris Tozzi to improve the reader experience.

Chris Tozzi is a freelance writer, research adviser, and professor of IT and society. He has previously worked as a journalist and Linux systems administrator. George Lawton is a journalist based in London. Over the last 30 years, he has written more than 3,000 stories about computers, communications, knowledge management, business, health and other areas that interest him.