One piece of advice for a PO

[George Paci]

All,

I'm giving a presentation to a group of Product Owners (some brand-new)
about their role. In addition to developers and testers, our teams also
have Subject Matter Experts and (usually) Business Analysts, so the POs
aren't going to be the only team members on the customer side.

If you could give a PO just one piece of advice, what would it be?

Thanks,
--George

"Identifying things that are repeatedly and badly reinvented"
--David Barbour, on how to advance the state of the art

[Amitai Schlair]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 2:05 PM, George Paci <gp...@tiac.net> wrote:

> If you could give a PO just one piece of advice, what would it be?

I don't know how to answer in the abstract. I can tell you what I'd
want to know about these particular POs before trying to answer
concretely.

* What were these POs (new and old alike) doing professionally before
they became POs?
* For the new ones, what sort of training have they had? For the
others, what sort of experiences have they had?
* How much do you think they know about what's being asked of them in
their roles?
* How much do _they_ think they know?
* Have they asked for your advice?

[Alan Dayley]

Seek to curate value, not features.

Alan

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[Mark Levison]

Working by yourself is ineffective. Collaborate with the team to express all of your ideas.

Cheers
Mark

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[Jean-Charles Meyrignac]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 7:05 PM, George Paci <gp...@tiac.net> wrote:

If you could give a PO just one piece of advice, what would it be?

Instead of advice, I would suggest that they constantly keep in mind a few questions:

1) what is important ? or what is the business value ?

2) who will do the work ? on what do I have direct control ?

3) how can I equally please the team and the customers ?

JC

[George Paci]

Ah, but I can make it into advice by tacking "You should ask yourself..." onto the beginning!

Can you say more about what you mean with #2, and what you hope they'll discover?

--George

[Jean-Charles Meyrignac]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 7:05 PM, George Paci <gp...@tiac.net> wrote:

If you could give a PO just one piece of advice, what would it be?

Instead of advice, I would suggest that they constantly keep in mind a few questions:

1) what is important ? or what is the business value ?

2) who will do the work ? on what do I have direct control ?

3) how can I equally please the team and the customers ?

Ah, but I can make it into advice by tacking "You should ask yourself..." onto the beginning!

Indeed.

Perhaps is there a way to present it in a non interrogative form.

Something like:

- focus on what's important (thus: what is important ?)

- focus on the satisfaction (and not only customers').

 

Can you say more about what you mean with #2, and what you hope they'll discover?

I put this point to avoid micro-management, and encourage engagement.
Most people identify themselves with the result of their work.
Some POs tend to believe that the project depends on their own competence.
If it fails, it means that they are themselves failures (it's my fault), or on the contrary the team is a failure (it's their fault).

Let them focus on what the PO can do: how could they use enough control so that developers won't deviate from the plan but still retain a sense of mastery ?

As you can see, it's difficult to formulate.

JC

[Andrew Webster]

I'd give them two pieces of advice:
1. Check Agile Product Design, holistic product design and agile software development to make sure you understand how to write thin slice stories that increment value and encourage iteration of work.
2. Run the demo yourself. Have the ScrumMaster take notes. That way you'll be certain that the work your accepting works the way you expect it to work.  If you can't run it, it's not doing what you thought it would.

Bonus advice: Share the cost of snacks for the Retro with the ScrumMaster!

[George Paci]

All,

Thanks for the helpful replies. The couple I didn't use in the
presentation are definitely things I'll stress with the Product Owners
as the projects progress.

Sorry to Amitai that I didn't answer his excellent questions: I didn't
have the answers to most of them until the presentation day (I asked
some at the beginning of the presentation).

> * Have they asked for your advice?

Definitely. (I moved this question first because it's the most important.)

> * What were these POs (new and old alike) doing professionally before
they became POs?

From what I can see, running the business-side processes that the
project will automate and support.

> * For the new ones, what sort of training have they had? For the
others, what sort of experiences have they had?

No training, some discussion with the technical side, who are better
trained (the ScrumMaster has been on a CSM course). None of the
business-side people seem to have any previous experience dealing with
software development.

> * How much do you think they know about what's being asked of them in
their roles?

Very little.

> * How much do _they_think they know?

Less. They were very happy to have the Product Owner, ScrumMaster, and
Team roles explained to them.

There were only three people in the audience, so we just covered their
questions as they came up. I found a couple of places where I'll be
adding visual material (I didn't think we'd cover things in as much
depth as, because of their interest, we did).

Again, thanks to everyone who replied.
--George


Overcoming complexity isn’t work, it’s waste.
--Rich Hickey

[Steve Toalson]

The ONE THING I would tell a product owner?   "Watch this video!  -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE "