Article summary
Creating great software products demands that teams balance multiple, equally-important priorities. Feature development, technical infrastructure work, security enhancements, support, and maintenance tasks each play their part.
The instinct to focus teams on feature development — work that supports the strategic roadmap, and delivers big wins — is so strong! Eventually, teams then need to decide when the pain from the other areas will be enough to focus on that work for weeks at a time, or more. The “layer cake” method creates targets for what would be an ideal mix.
What is the ‘Layer Cake’ Method?
This method has been used for a company’s portfolio or future investment strategies, but it works great for product management priorities, too!
For example, take our product priorities from above… a sample mix could look like this:
- 50% strategic roadmap – feature development that supports product milestones
- 20% technical roadmap – tech infrastructure or refactor work
- 20% security enhancements – stories that harden the app and protect PII
- 10% support and maintenance – bug fixes and deployments, support user requests
This would mean that in a given sprint, half the effort is on strategic features, an equal (but smaller) amount of effort is focused on cross-cutting technical work and security updates, and a small portion of time is set aside for bug fixes and deploying work. Sprint points can be a good enough metric as they inherently account for relative effort.
Benefits for the Product Team
Using these targets when planning the work enables teams to support active users and stay current with the tech, avoiding the dreaded tech debt bubble.
Benefits to Users
Users will appreciate the balance of minor enhancements with strategic feature work. Doing so means they see continuous improvements in their experience with the app while also getting major upgrades regularly.
Benefits for the Business
Managing products with the ‘Layer Cake’ method helps companies see progress on multiple roadmap priorities. This is a big win, especially for larger orgs with many departments. Product, Sales, Marketing, and IT rely on steady traction.
The ‘Layer Cake’ method can avoid lengthy negotiations for who wins first priority and, instead, shifts the conversation to “what’s the most valuable work we can accomplish with a steady 20% of our dev team’s capacity?”.
Getting Started
- Create a baseline – What’s the ratio of work your team is already doing? What is or is not working about the current allocation?
- Align on the layers – Given the maturity of the product, the roadmap objectives the team needs to hit, or even focus areas that may be way behind, what is a ‘good enough’ mix?
- Categorize the work – Create a system to help track which work falls into which focus area. This comes in handy for planning and reporting.
- Report and reflect – Measure adherence to the targets from work that was delivered.
As you’re putting this into practice, not all sprints will be ideal. Leave time to reflect, in retros or with product leaders, on what gets in the way, and what helps the team hit the targets. Especially, take note when the team is close to the targets. Do those sprints validate that the ratio is working to deliver the outcomes we’re after, or do the targets need to shift?
For me, this method has become a frequency illusion. Once I became familiar, I saw its relevance everywhere. Whether it was maturing startups needing to recalibrate after a public launch, or mature product teams navigating the push and pull of departments competing for their strategic objectives. When the ‘Layer Cake’ method becomes the way the team works, product teams create predictability and deliver well-rounded solutions.