Agile is everywhere. Teams sprint. Scrums or Stand ups happen. Backlogs are refined, teams plan and review work. But despite all the ceremony, a fair amount of products still fail to meet user needs, to scale when a large client comes on board, or drive meaningful impact. There are stats showing that up 70% of code for digital products is no longer used... Why? Because Agile delivery without true product thinking is just motion, not momentum.

To build great products, organizations need more than just Agile. They need harmony—Product–Agile Harmony. (This is the title of my next upcoming book - so stay tuned)

The False Comfort of Agile Alone

Agile helps us adapt. But without a clear product vision, strong discovery, and meaningful user insight, we risk:

• Delivering faster… but not smarter.

• Prioritizing what's easy to build, not what’s valuable to users.

• Hitting deadlines and delivering output… while missing outcomes.

Agile gives us the engine. Product gives us the direction. Harmony aligns both. Sometimes the Product Manager and Product Owner can be the same person but often its 2 people in different organizational structures...

What Harmony Really Looks Like

In high-performing organizations, you’ll find:

• Product goals owned at all levels, not just in PowerPoint decks. These goals are created by the product organization and drive the engineering teams sprint goals, they are on everyone's lips...

• Discovery and delivery running together, not in silos. A development team must be fully involved in discovery, just like Product, UX, analysts etc.

• Roadmaps that are outcome-driven, not feature lists. This is one of the biggest changes for a lot of Product Managers. How do you let the team define what output to build based on the outcomes you are after.

• Backlogs that evolve through insight, not just stakeholder demand. Data driven insights is a must. Gather as much as you can pre making a decision. Use AI to help gather and sort the data

• Agile teams guided by empowered product leaders, not just ceremonies. Teams should not be "Doing agile" but need to be agile, empowered to make choices, make and own mistakes and deliver what will work best. Empowered teams is more than just "following scrum"

Quote from my upcoming book "Product Agile Harmony"

“If delivery moves faster than learning, we ship assumptions at scale. If product vision stays disconnected from day-to-day Agile reality, teams build with speed but with no strategic intent.”

Why This Matters for Leaders

For Heads of Product, CPOs, and digital leaders, the harmony between Agile and Product is not optional—it’s a differentiator. It’s how we:

• Align teams with strategic priorities

• Balance discovery and delivery

• Foster a culture of experimentation and ownership

• Deliver meaningful business outcomes, not just output

  
  

Ask Yourself:

• Is your organization optimizing for output or outcomes?

• Do your teams understand the why behind their work, or just the what?

• Are your product and delivery rhythms in sync—or constantly clashing?

Final Thought

Agile alone won’t save a broken product strategy. Product thinking alone won’t scale without delivery discipline. But together—in harmony—they drive extraordinary results.

This is the focus of my upcoming book, Product Agile Harmony – Optimizing Product and Agile for Organizational Success and Harmony, which I’m preparing to submit for agent representation.

Let’s talk:

What does Product–Agile Harmony look like in your world?

Where does it feel misaligned?

Drop your thoughts below.