85 Percent Organizations Favor a Product-Centric Application Delivery Model

85 percent of organizations have adopted, or plan to adopt, a product-centric application delivery model, according to a survey by Gartner. Although full adoption is rare, overall, survey respondents use the product-centric model for 40 percent of their work in 2018. Gartner predicts that this figure will reach 80 percent by 2022.

“The increase in how quickly and broadly organizations are adopting the product-centric application model doesn’t arise randomly. It goes hand-in-hand with the adoption of agile development methodologies and DevOps,“ said Bill Swanton, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. “In addition, an increasing number of applications that IT teams develop are used by external parties, such as clients or partners, and require the increased customer focus that characterizes the product-centric model.“

The survey found that over half (54 percent) of respondents expect to fully adopt the product-centric application model over time, while roughly one-third (32 percent) plan partial adoption. Managing everything as a product is unlikely to be justified, as some IT activities, such as initial implementation of a large software package, may well be better managed as projects.

32 percent of the survey respondents identified a need to deliver more quickly as their main driver of adoption of a product-centric application approach. Digital business came second (31 percent of respondents). Concerns about project-based funding and the culture clash between “the business“ and “IT“ were the top challenges for 55 percent of the respondents. 46 percent of the respondents said their organization had already appointed a product manager, while 15 percent plan to introduce this role by the end of 2018. Ten percent have no plans to introduce this role.

According to the majority of respondents, product managers report, or will report, to the IT organization or project management office. At the same time, respondents said they expect the role of application leader to change. For 43 percent of respondents the role will reside in the IT organization, while for 32 percent it will migrate into business teams where the application leader will lead a product line or be a group or single product manager.