The Craft of Product Development + The Product Mindset w/ Scott Varho, SVP of Tech at 3Pillar Global

15 Jan 2020 · 31 min
31:27

In this 30‑minute Product Collective industry interview, host Mike Belsito introduces the Product Collective community— newsletters, Slack, conferences— and welcomes Scott Varho, SVP of Technology at 3Pillar Global. Scott explains the "product mindset," a set of values and principles that go beyond Agile by anchoring teams to clear business outcomes and aligning multidisciplinary crafts (UX, QA, engineering, DevOps). He contrasts it with traditional backlog prioritization, emphasizing that the mindset helps teams prioritize based on outcome rather than stakeholder pressure. Scott discusses common implementation mistakes, such as centralizing decisions, neglecting the "scaffolding" of DevOps and code‑pipeline automation, and failing to involve craftspeople in problem framing. He uses a construction‑scaffolding metaphor to illustrate how investing in automation and standards reduces cycle time (throughput myopia) and enables rapid delivery of value. The conversation covers rethinking velocity— distinguishing story‑point capacity from true cycle‑time speed— and how to decide how much user research is sufficient, advocating small‑batch insights and micro‑experiments. Scott offers tactics for getting engineering teams to invest time in planning and scaffolding, stressing the need to create space for engineers to contribute ideas. He also talks about the courage required to stop a project early when ROI wanes. The role of product ops and DevOps is framed as integration rather than separation, with the goal of a unified ecosystem. The interview closes with a call‑to‑action to read the newly released "Product Mindset" book and follow 3Pillar Global on LinkedIn.

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