John Deere Leverages IT Project Managers in Digital Transformation
John Deere is more than a century-old manufacturer of agricultural machinery. But in recent years it has transformed into a company that manages digital products, platforms, data flows. IT Project Managers made all the difference.
John Deere is more than a century-old manufacturer of agricultural machinery. But in recent years it has transformed into a company that manages digital products, platforms, data flows and ecosystems. Digital transformation is hitting more and more legacy companies just like this.
The shift was about more than adding sensors or software. It was about changing how the business thinks, organizes and delivers value. And at the heart of that change was the work being done by IT Project Managers behind the scenes.
The Challenge of Real-World Systems
In agriculture, the physical and digital worlds collide. Tractors, harvesters and sprayers must work in the field, under weather and terrain stress, with human operators and dealers, and over decades of legacy machines and relationships.
Until recently, John Deere’s digital efforts were episodic add-ons: new features, incremental service apps, equipment upgrades. But as the agricultural sector faces demands for higher yields, tighter sustainability, data-driven insights and faster decision-making, the stakes changed.
John Deere recognized that streaming sensor data and delivering dashboards alone wouldn’t get the job done. What was needed was a product-led approach: treating digital solutions as enduring products, not labelled “IT projects” with fixed scope and delivery date.
According to its own case-study, John Deere began a shift around 2019 to actively adopt an “Agile operating model” and move from “investing in IT initiatives” to “investing in digital products”.
Product-Centric Thinking in a Machinery Heavy Industry
Core to this transformation were three interconnected shifts:
- Outcome orientation over output– Instead of shipping equipment and counting units, John Deere focused on enabling data-driven decisions for farmers: optimizing yield, minimizing downtime, enabling remote agronomy. A Harvard case notes that their platform “MyJohnDeere” connected machines, owners, advisors and captured soil, weather and crop data to enable more precise operations.
- From project to product– In a traditional model, each digital initiative would be treated as a project: defined scope, budget, timeline. John Deere changed to treat digital offerings as products: continuous roadmaps, feedback loops, evolving user experience. For example, they introduced tooling and governance so that the leadership could view total product cost monthly rather than annually.
- Ecosystems and platforms, not just internal builds– The company opened its platform to third party developers, agronomists, input-suppliers, dealers and data partners. That meant managing partner onboarding, API governance, ecosystem value capture. This is product management at a large scale: defining user segments, setting up pricing or freemium models, ensuring integration and interoperability.
Why This Matters for IT Product Managers in Non-Software Domains
When the environment is physical, regulated, complex and legacy-laden, IT product management becomes a strategic function. For example:
- Product managers at John Deere gained visibility into total cost of ownership, shifting how investment decisions were made: from annual planning to monthly governance.
- They created capability to rationalize platforms and applications, improving transparency and reducing waste: John Deere’s internal case mentions saving over 10,000 people-hours and rationalizing more than 15 systems.
- They fostered cultural change: instead of IT as order-taker, product management helped IT become advisor to the business, aligning business strategy, data, engineering and partner ecosystems.
The Bigger Take-Away
For industries that aren’t “pure software”—manufacturing, agriculture, utilities, life sciences—the product manager plays a different, deeper role. The John Deere example shows that when product management is elevated to organizational change instead of just moving a project forward, it becomes a key enabler of transformation.
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