For decades, enterprises have been wired to deliver through projects. The rhythm was familiar: scope a set of initiatives, allocate budget, assign teams, and execute against a deadline. Projects made sense in a world where transformation was episodic and the environment relatively predictable.
But the dynamics of modern business – constant disruption, shifting customer expectations, and technology cycles measured in months rather than years – mean that the project operating model can no longer carry the weight of long-term value creation.
Instead, leading organisations are learning to operate through products — persistent, outcome-driven units of value creation. And those with true ambition are pushing further, evolving into platforms that don’t just serve their own customers, but enable entire ecosystems.
This shift from project → product → platform is not just a vocabulary change. It requires a re-wiring of governance, funding, culture, and leadership mindset. Having led digital, product, and strategy transformations across organisations as diverse as News Corp Australia and IAG (Insurance Australia Group), and now across customers in the technology space with Amplitude, I’ve seen the nuances and the pitfalls first-hand.
And globally, the lessons are reinforced by case studies from conservative banks like DBS in Singapore and Santander in Europe, alongside newer platform-native businesses like OpenAI, Amplitude, and Airbnb.
This is the story of how operating models evolve – and what leaders must do to design them intentionally.
Stage One: The Project Operating Model
Projects are not dead. For large, complex enterprises, they remain essential. When you need to respond to regulatory change, replace a core system, or deliver a time-boxed transformation, a project framework makes sense.
But here’s the problem: projects end. And when they do, the knowledge, capability, and accountability often dissolve with them. The outcome may be delivered, but the ability to sustain and evolve it vanishes.
At IAG, I saw this tension clearly. Major regulatory responses and claims infrastructure rebuilds were treated as multi-year projects. They delivered on scope, but too often the value dissipated because there was no persistent owner to carry the work forward into customer experience improvements, cost optimisation, or innovation.
This is a common pattern globally. DBS, before its transformation, ran technology delivery as a set of disconnected programmes. The result was speed in bursts but little compounding learning. The bank shifted to “T-sprints” – 12-week transformation sprints tied to business outcomes – embedding persistent product ownership inside project frameworks (DBS Transformation Case).
Projects will remain, but leaders must ask:
- How will outcomes be owned after the project ends?
- What product structures can be embedded within?
- How do we avoid “organisational amnesia” every time a project team disbands?
Stage Two: The Product Operating Model
Shifting to a product model means committing to durable teams, focused on clear outcomes, with accountability for ongoing performance. Unlike projects, products don’t end – they evolve.
At News Corp Australia, the transformation of digital advertising was the inflection point. In the project era, ad tech rollouts were scoped and shipped, then handed back to operations. But when we reframed them as products – advertising platforms, audience insights tools, content recommendation systems – they gained owners, roadmaps, and the ability to continuously adapt to customer and market signals. That shift underpinned growth in digital revenues and future-proofed the organisation against waves of change in programmatic advertising.
Globally, Santander offers one of the most compelling “conservative-to-product” stories. A century-old bank with deeply entrenched programme delivery, it launched a Global Agile Centre of Excellence and embedded cross-functional product teams into core businesses. The results were measurable: delivery times 67% faster, systemic legacy debt reduced, and customer-facing digital products that rival fintechs (Santander Transformation).
The lesson: product models are not just for Silicon Valley natives. Even the most conservative, regulated enterprises can (and must) adopt them.
But leaders must grasp the strategic differences:
- Funding shifts from capex project cycles to opex product budgets.
- Success is measured by outcomes (customer growth, NPS, cost-to-serve), not outputs delivered.
- Talent retention improves because teams own their work over time.
- Governance evolves from milestone reviews to continuous measurement and learning.
This requires courage from leaders of today’s businesses. You don’t get the instant clarity of a project plan. Instead, you get persistent accountability, which is harder but infinitely more powerful.
Stage Three: The Platform Operating Model
The next horizon is the platform. Where products deliver value to customers, platforms enable others to build value themselves.
Platforms create flywheels: the more participants (customers, developers, partners), the more valuable the platform becomes. They require a very different leadership mindset – one of enablement, restraint, and ecosystem stewardship.
At Amplitude, for example, the platform strategy is not just about providing analytics features. It’s about enabling an ecosystem where product managers, marketers, data teams and engineers can build, integrate, and extend insights across their own stacks, and democratise decision-making. The value compounds with every new integration and every team that builds atop the core.
Airbnb is another case: what began as a product (a booking marketplace) became a platform when it enabled hosts to list, price, and manage experiences. The ecosystem – not the company – created the diversity of value.
And most recently, OpenAI demonstrates platform strategy in action. By opening its models via APIs and the GPT Store, it has enabled a wave of third-party innovation. Developers build apps, enterprises embed capabilities, and the platform becomes more valuable with every new use case. This is the essence of network effects in a modern context (OpenAI GPT Store).
Platforms require strong vertical coupling – clear strategic boundaries on what you build and what you leave to the ecosystem. But they must avoid horizontal entanglement – teams weighed down by interdependencies. The platform’s clarity is what gives third parties confidence to invest.
Navigating the Tensions
The reality is most ambitious organisations will need to navigate all three models – projects, products, and platforms – simultaneously.
At IAG, projects will always exist for compliance and infrastructure. But embedding product teams within them ensures durability.
At News Corp Australia, products created enduring growth but also seeded platform potential in audience and advertising ecosystems.
At DBS and Santander, the blend of programme structure with product ownership enabled transformation at scale.
And in technology, the platform-native businesses show what becomes possible when ecosystems are designed deliberately.
The challenge for leaders is to be intentional. Too often, organisations drift — projects masquerading as products, products overreaching into platform without clarity, platforms suffocating under unresolved legacy debt.
The question for leaders of organisations today is not “Should we operate in a project, product, or platform model?” The real question is:
“How do we consciously design the right operating model for the outcomes we need — and evolve it as our ambition grows?”
Leadership Implications
1. Governance
- Move from milestone approvals to continuous outcome measurement.
- Be explicit about what is product, what is platform, and what remains project.
2. Funding
- Stop treating every investment as a capex project.
- Shift to persistent product funding, with platforms requiring ecosystem-scale investment horizons.
3. Culture
- Projects reward delivery heroes. Products reward sustained ownership. Platforms reward restraint and enablement.
- Leaders must adapt their recognition systems accordingly.
4. Risk Appetite
- Projects reduce risk through upfront scope.
- Products manage risk through iteration.
- Platforms accept risk in the ecosystem – controlling the boundaries, not the outcomes.
Closing Challenge to Leaders
The temptation is to declare yourself a “platform company” or to claim you’ve “gone agile.” But buzzwords don’t change operating models.
What matters is intentional design. Projects, products, and platforms are not just stages of maturity – they are different models of value creation, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and leadership demands.
The organisations that thrive in the coming decade will be those that master the balance:
- Delivering through projects when needed.
- Sustaining through products where outcomes must endure.
- Scaling through platforms when ecosystems become the growth engine.
The journey is not linear, but it is necessary. And it begins with leaders willing to ask:
Are we designing our operating model consciously – or are we drifting into it by accident?
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