WHAT WE DO

“Great products are defined along the way.”

Truly great products cannot be defined at the outset. They are discovered along the way - in constant dialogue with customers, with an empowered, cross-functional team that is capable and motivated to solve tough problems and build trust with stakeholders.

To work this way takes a new mindset – both for those involved day-to-day, and for the stakeholders. Chairos helps you adopt this mindset and make it work for you - to build software products that deliver consistent value.

What we often observe at clients:

• High cash burn and delayed monetization - product market fit is unclear and more of a wish than a reality

• Lack of continuous customer dialogue - plus internal debates (fights) over “who owns” the customer

• The focus on process (i.e. some variant of Scrum, Kanban, or other) seems to be more important than the value delivered

• Lack of trust from leaders and the board

• Development decisions are made that makes the product drift from the customer focus and creates little value for customer

• Too much effort spent on things that does not really matter before product-market fit is confirmed (by the market)

OUR SERVICES

We support CTOs, CPOs, CEOs, boards, product boards or any other body responsible for how products are built in your organization.

Product vision, strategy, roadmap and architecture

At the core of any successful product is the product vision. It must be crystal clear what value the product will bring, what problems it will solve and which customers and markets it will serve. Our best practice is to run an integrated project over 10-15 weeks. It’s a no-bullshit project that addresses both what the product will do and how it should be done. We do not believe in consultancy language, and fancy slides, but rather we absorb the clients domain vocabulary and run collaborative workshops which documents the findings. We do not spend a lot of time on a deep assessment of the status, but rather accept the situation and spend the time on the strengths and what is needed to realize the potential. Once we are done, you have a clear product vision, a documented product strategy to fulfill the vision, a high-level roadmap to execute the strategy, and a high level product architecture to enable the roadmap and thus secure succsessful developement of the product..

Advisory and coaching

Products succeed when the product vision, strategy, roadmap, and architecture are all aligned and always have the customer in focus. We help establish the right culture and make sure you get constant input from those the product is intended for. We help you establish the right governance with the optimal team topology. We assist in hiring and in the execution. We can meet on a weekly basis and be available for ad-hoc coaching. (This is what we in Noregian call Produktledelse)

Lectures

Are you looking for inspiration to get the transformation going? We engage with boards, leadership teams and product teams and offer a tailored lecture based on your situation and our experience.

INSPIRATION

Chairos and our offering is based on a profound belief in the strength of a discovery-oriented approach to building tech products. This belief is built through first-hand experience in business and product leadership. It is also inspired by prominent thinkers and practitioners in this fast developing field. Here are some of them.

Marty Cagan : Silicon Valley Product Group

Marty Cagan is a Silicon Valley-based product executive with more than 20 years of experience with industry leaders including eBay, AOL, Netscape Communications and Hewlett-Packard. He is the author of the book “Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love” which presents techniques for creating winning products.

Marc Andreessen – Why Software is eating the world

In 2011, American investor and entrepreneur Marc Andreessen published an essay in The Wall Street Journal called “Why software is eating the world”. His prediction was that software companies would disrupt traditional industries. He was right. Since then, we’ve seen industries transform and companies fold in response to Amazon, Netflix, Airbnb, and more.

Hope Gurion: Fearless Product

Hope Gurion founded Fearless Product LLC to assist product leaders and product teams seeking growth through customer-centric, evidence-based strategies.