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CaseInterview.com
SEPTEMBER 15, 2025
Today, I want to introduce you to (or perhaps remind you of) the concept of the minimum efficient scale. For example, Amazon is able to process and deliver its customers’ orders very efficiently because of its “scale.”. Minimum efficient scale can be used in many contexts.
Seth Godin Blog
SEPTEMBER 2, 2025
When time gets short (for new parents or startup founders, for example) we naturally focus on getting efficient. But being efficient is not the same as being productive.
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Johanna Rothman
JUNE 9, 2025
Resource Efficiency. ” “Each resource has at least two projects so they stay productive and efficient.” ” These managers have created a resource efficiency culture, not a flow efficiency culture, as in the image above. Resource efficiency means we watch each person's effort. In contrast, a flow efficiency culture watches the flow of the work. That's resource efficiency. Back in the flow efficiency series).
Johanna Rothman
MARCH 8, 2026
The larger your product, the more likely you have components teams. I often see component teams because of the architecture of the product. In this first image, the Integrated System Program, the rest of the product uses the Platform of Common Services as components.
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Johanna Rothman
NOVEMBER 9, 2025
Strategy and Product Feedback Loops. Instead of teams being responsible for delivering product, the managers are responsible for explaining when the managers want to decide. What about product decisions? Instead of product deadlines, we get decision deadlines.
Epicflow Blog
JUNE 17, 2025
For the growing companies, it’s crucially important to keep track of all their products and make sure they are in demand and meet customers’ needs. Product portfolio management can make this happen. The Essence of Product Portfolio Management and Its Main Functions.
Tom Spencer
MAY 17, 2025
This is a new experience for many of us, and poses new challenges and distractions that can make it difficult to stay focused and productive. I’ve been getting asked a lot lately about productivity, and so I thought I should dedicate an article to it.
Harvard Business
AUGUST 25, 2025
Leadership & Managing people Coaching Productivity Digital ArticleIt doesn’t have to feel draining.
Consulting Success
OCTOBER 24, 2025
Consulting Success Podcast Efficiency Idea Flow Idea Quantity Inspiration productivity Taking ActionThe single biggest determinant of how good your ideas are is the quantity of your ideas. Entrepreneurs get stuck so much on the quality of their ideas when they should just be doing more ideas. Have options and quantity in everything you do. You’re not just going down one narrow straight path. It’s okay to.
Harvard Business
MARCH 1, 2026
Business leaders often think of “efficiency” and “productivity” as synonyms, two sides of the same coin. When it comes to strategy, however, efficiency and productivity are very different. At a time when so many companies are starved for growth, senior leaders must bring a productivity mindset to their business and remove organizational obstacles to workforce productivity. Efficiency is about doing the same with less.
Johanna Rothman
MARCH 29, 2026
I'm also a fan of working in flow efficiency , so the team can finish more features faster. In addition, when managers reward flow efficiency, people tend to collaborate more, not just cooperate. Joanie, a new VP Engineering, joined the company a couple of weeks ago.
Consulthon
FEBRUARY 10, 2026
One of the reasons is that we have created a new product for the organic markets. Hi All, One of my company's goals is to develop new international markets. Currently, I do research on Linkedin a
Consulthon
DECEMBER 1, 2025
The company I am managing for 3 years is planning to develop a new product. My team has started working on the new product. I am a manager in a financial services company. The sales and marketing t
Epicflow Blog
MAY 12, 2025
What do you need to know to allocate resources efficiently in a multi-project environment and utilize them to the full? Resources are allocated efficiently when the right people work on the right tasks, while employees’ workload remains balanced – they are neither over- or underloaded. .
Johanna Rothman
SEPTEMBER 22, 2025
One of the big problems I see with a product orientation (as opposed to a project) is in preparing for ongoing work. You might not start the next project for this product after you complete this project. You might have to round-robin projects for various products because you don’t have enough people to do all the projects at the same time. However, if you want to develop a product orientation, you’ll need to consider the future.
Epicflow Blog
APRIL 15, 2025
To be able to stay competitive on the market and cope with any arising issues, aerospace engineering companies are expected to seek how to improve operational efficiency in general and the engineering processes in particular. . What drives efficiency of aircraft engineering projects?
Johanna Rothman
SEPTEMBER 21, 2025
We hear a lot these days about project-based organizations vs. product-based organizations. Much of what we do in software is in service of products. Products tend to evolve over time. However, once we finish this release, the “product” (the output of the project) doesn’t change and incorporate our learning for the future. Physical products that don’t incorporate software. We don’t change the product once we’re done.
Comatch
SEPTEMBER 14, 2025
This is because hobbies can impact both internal drivers of efficiency, like multi-tasking, and external factors, such as networking and information collection. . 3 Reasons Hobbies Drive Productivity. The post Three Reasons Hobbies Translate Into Productivity appeared first on COMATCH.
Harvard Business
FEBRUARY 12, 2026
Productivity Digital ArticleIf focusing on your to-do list means you aren’t focusing on your employees, that’s a problem.
Epicflow Blog
JANUARY 28, 2026
Besides, business owners can have their facilities around the world independent of their place of residence or other teams that aren’t involved in production. How to address all these challenges properly so that you can make your resources as productive as possible?
Harvard Business
MARCH 22, 2026
A conversation with writer Madeleine Dore about letting go of efficiency in the name of creativity. Personal productivity Time management Mindfulness Audio
Johanna Rothman
OCTOBER 12, 2025
I’ve been thinking about my clients who’ve had success moving from a project-based/resource-efficiency organization to a product-based/flow efficiency organization. The senior manager often asked a question like this: What do you need from me, to move to a product organization, where we optimize for the flow of product to the customers, and the satisfaction of the employees? The products were all larger than one team.).
Epicflow Blog
JULY 27, 2025
Increasing employee productivity is a hot topic in every business environment today. What Affects Employee Productivity? There are plenty of factors impacting people’s productivity – from proper workflow organization to employees’ lifestyle and health condition.
Virtual Project Consulting
FEBRUARY 17, 2026
With the work from home trend the question is: "How to lead productive online meetings?" Find guidelines for efficient online meetings and engaged participants. The post How to lead productive online meetings first appeared on Virtual Project Management Consulting.
Johanna Rothman
OCTOBER 8, 2025
How do we move from a project-based organization towards a product organization? I’ve noticed these challenges in companies who want to move to a more product-oriented approach: The reward system rewards resource efficiency, not flow efficiency. The company doesn’t have enough product people (product managers, product owners, people who can make decisions about what a team needs to deliver and in what order.
Johanna Rothman
APRIL 23, 2025
Many people in the agile community promote a product orientation over a project orientation. That's possible because an organization has product or feature teams. That works until you have more products than teams. If you keep teams together, you can still use projects in a product-oriented organization. If we have done enough for now, we can move to the next product. What we want is for the team(s) to take a break on this product and move to the next product.
Johanna Rothman
OCTOBER 8, 2025
How could we organize if we want flow efficiency? We would reward managers by their span of service instead of control, part 3 , stop organizing by function, and move to something that looks like a product-based organization? That culture helps managers learn how to serve the people and the products. If we do have to create a bonus, can that bonus be tied to flow efficiency and collaboration to release products faster?
1 to 1
AUGUST 9, 2025
Yet, in many businesses, there is often some overlap and confusion over what defines the roles of a front office and back office, making it difficult to prioritize an area for greater efficiency and productivity.
Tom Spencer
NOVEMBER 4, 2025
Making the most of each one will help you to become more productive and, ultimately, achieve your goals. There are many different ingredients that combine to determine your productivity including the time of day, physical environment, your level of motivation, as well as your innate ability to stay focused. Whatever your natural tendencies, there are a number of common sense strategies that can help you be as productive as possible. Silence can be productivity’s best friend.
Tom Spencer
AUGUST 10, 2025
Give me an example of a good product and not so good product. This product management (PM) interview question tests whether you understand product design principles. Is your evaluation of products guided by principles of good design? One approach to answering this question is to: Pick two products that do similar things and describe what they do. Define the design principles behind the success of this product. Efficiency ?: Efficiency.
Johanna Rothman
OCTOBER 3, 2025
This series is about how you might move to a product-based organization. Part 2 was about one possibility for moving to a product-based organization. Moving to a product-based organization means we change the way we view and reward managers. All those measures are about a manager’s span of control, a sign of resource efficiency. If you measure based on only the date, you release potentially-horrible product. Product managers manage the product roadmaps.
Johanna Rothman
SEPTEMBER 3, 2025
However, if people collaborate with pairing, swarming, or mobbing, they work in flow efficiency. All this collaboration and learning together means the team shares its product development. If you're a product leader, you need a product value team. No one can work alone for product development and know that they will make great decisions. See Little’s Law for Any Kind of Product Development: How to Learn How Long Your Work Will Take.).
Johanna Rothman
APRIL 11, 2026
That intent might be an entire product. That cross-functional team is a product team or a feature team. I tend to call them feature teams because they might move from feature set to feature set when they work as part of a program or over time as the product evolves. I don't actually care what you call these teams, as long as you have the same intent: the team works together to finish work on a product or feature set. Product Roles, Part 2: The Product Value Team.
Johanna Rothman
APRIL 26, 2025
As I've written these product role posts, a number of you have asked about how to use component teams. I have several assumptions for being able to use component teams: Each “task” or piece of work is a connected story to the other layers of the product. Each team has the capability to build and test the entire product at all times. That way, they know they're not doing something wacko with the product. Product Roles, Part 2: The Product Value Team.
Johanna Rothman
APRIL 14, 2025
Their developers work on a product for months and years at a time. ” Shared service-thinking denies the reality of effective product development: A cross-functional team learns together as they develop the product. We are less effective—and less efficient.
Johanna Rothman
MARCH 8, 2026
That disconnect occurs when managers, HR, everyone focuses on resource efficiency, not flow efficiency. If we ask people to work in flow efficiency, how can we possibly reward them on resource efficiency? I like to think of all deliverables as products.
Johanna Rothman
SEPTEMBER 28, 2025
You might even call them/use them as product teams. You might wonder about organizing all the work as product work. The “Typical Product Development Organization” shows the kind of organization I see most often. The various development directors correspond to the various horizontal layers in the product. Note that the product management and customer support folks have no representation here.
Harvard Business
JANUARY 5, 2026
Four ways to improve efficiency at the organizational level. Collaboration Organizational structure Productivity Digital Article
Johanna Rothman
DECEMBER 14, 2025
Instead, I spend most of my time on product issues across the organization. The next bit of time I spend working alone on the product work.” “Why do you spend all this time doing the product work yourself?”
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