Becky Flint is founder and CEO of Dragonboat, the responsive portfolio platform for product teams to build products customers love and deliver business results. In her career Becky has built and scaled portfolio management at Shutterfly, Feedzai and BigCommerce. She is an expert in managing ProductOps portfolios with an outcome-focused approach. In this episode of Unlearn, she and Barry O’Reilly discuss how Dragonboat is changing the game in portfolio management, and why you should make the shift to become outcome-focused.

Finding Her Way

Becky’s entrepreneurial journey wasn’t linear. She moved to the US with a medical background to study business, then went on to do tech, until she finally found her calling in product. She founded Dragonboat by piecing together the best bits of her experiences in these industries. One of the things that emboldened her to step out her comfort zone and go into completely different domains was her confidence in her ability to learn new things. Becky believed she could build on top of the skills she already had and learn what she didn’t know. It was better than starting from zero, with no skills, knowledge or experience to speak of, she shares.

Building Dragonboat

The development of the portfolio management at PayPal was originally a connect-the-dots for certain systems, according to Becky. Data revealed business outcomes, product strategy and execution, and resourcing weren’t properly communicating, so Becky created a middle engine to put all the messy stuff together. Barry remarks, “Even a few hours ago, I was in a session with some teams… and you could see that people were struggling because sometimes their corporate strategy just feels so far removed from their day-to-day work.” Becky’s “phenomenal” portfolio management makes a typically difficult process significantly easier.

Outcomes Over Outputs

One of the biggest debates in the product management industry currently is the notion of becoming more outcome-focused, Barry comments. However, not only is it difficult, but it’s also a huge change in the way people manage their work. Most people are primarily focused on output-based measures of success, such as being on time and being on budget. Becky describes some of the growing pains she experienced in helping people shift their mindsets. “Output focus really came from the industry era… the executive would make all the calls, and the team would just do what they were told, but then we realized the executive doesn’t know everything, they don’t have the latest information, so they have to rely on the team to stay competitive,” she explains.

Making the Decision to Make a Decision

Every time you make a decision, you must consider the upside, the limiting factor of time, and the resources you have available. “Not making a decision means you already failed,” Becky advises. “You definitely don't have resources for all of them. If you want to do all of them and you don’t have the resources, everything will take forever and you won’t get any outcomes.”

Looking Ahead

“What I'm most excited to see really is the trend moving from the output-focused command and control to the outcome-focused empowerment,” Becky notes. “I really believe you need alignment to be able to empower your team. Alignment and autonomy need to come together, so not too much control or the chaos of no control.”

Read full show notes at BarryO'Reilly.com

Resources

Becky Flint on the Web | LinkedIn | Twitter