Let’s get straight to the point: if your organisation is still running on a project mindset, you’re playing an outdated game. The world has moved on, and your customers don’t care about your timelines, budgets, or internal milestones. They care about value. Real, tangible, evolving value. That’s the fundamental shift from an inside-out (project) to an outside-in (product) approach. And if you don’t get this, your competitors will.
Project Thinking: The Inside-Out Illusion
Projects are comfortable. They have clear starts and ends. You set a budget, a timeline, and deliverables. You create a Gantt chart, hit some milestones, close it down, and celebrate. Job done, right? Wrong.
A project mindset is an internal construct—designed for predictability, efficiency, and control. But it fails in environments where customer needs shift rapidly, and where success is not a deadline but a continuously evolving outcome. The reality? Projects end, but customer needs don’t. Your rigid scope and fixed KPIs? They expire the moment the market moves.
Product Thinking: The Outside-In Revolution
A product mindset, on the other hand, flips the perspective. It starts with the customer and works backwards. It doesn’t care about arbitrary project deadlines—it cares about continuous improvement, iteration, and delivering sustained value over time.
A product mindset means:
- Continuous feedback loops with real customers, not just internal stakeholders.
- Roadmaps based on outcomes, not outputs.
- Cross-functional, empowered teams owning long-term success, not just execution.
- Funding models that support evolution, not expiration.
Why the Transition is So Hard (and Why You Need to Push Through)
Shifting from project to product is painful for most large organisations because it rips apart ingrained ways of working. It forces leaders to stop thinking in short-term wins and start playing the long game. It dismantles comfortable hierarchies and replaces them with cross-functional autonomy. It replaces the illusion of certainty with the reality of continuous change.
So, why should you care? Because product-led organisations consistently outperform project-led ones. They innovate faster, adapt better, and deliver sustained customer and business value. Look at companies like Amazon, Spotify, or Tesla—none of them think in projects. They think in products, platforms, and ecosystems.
Making the Shift
If you’re serious about making the transition:
- Kill the Project Funding Model – Fund teams and outcomes, not one-off initiatives.
- Redefine Success – Move from delivery-based KPIs to customer and business value metrics.
- Empower Teams – Give them ownership of a problem space, not just a delivery checklist.
- Obsess Over Customers, Not Stakeholders – Internal alignment is secondary to external impact.
The Bottom Line
Product vs Project. A project mindset will keep you busy. A product mindset will keep you relevant. The choice is yours.
Related links:
Silicon Valley Product Group: Product vs. Project Teams
ADAPT Methodology®: Product vs Project: Understanding the Differences
