As many of you might know, the product owner role is perhaps the most difficult role in the Agile setup. It sometimes feels like it takes super powers to manage. Here I have tried to capture some of the important mindsets, processes and tools that I find valuable for coaching and training Product Owners and Agile Teams and leaders.
As a product Owner you need an understanding of what value the business wants to accomplish (not necessary how the business works), strategic and tactical skills in the craft of product development (mostly done by slicing), ability to work together with the team in the discovery process and with the stakeholders to understand their needs and goals and great communication skills to manage expectations.
UPDATE MAY 22nd 2017: Now you can download this poster in Italian >
UPDATE JUNE 4th 2017: Now you can download this poster in Spanish >
UPDATE JANUARY 1st 2018: Now you can download this poster in French >
Download the Free Agile Product Ownership Poster in English as high resolution (PDF) >
As Agile practices proves to work better than other practices and spreads, it starts to involve the organization outside of IT or the development department. When companies start moving towards a more Agile organization across the silos, they might realize they are missing actual product owners and a product owner organization with representation from the business, and they bring in people from the business side to the PO role. What might strike many new product owners is how different the Agile way of working is (usually they love it), and how different the PO role is from their earlier experiences, maybe as a mid level manager. The product ownership is about NOT managing the details, NOR the people. It´s NOT EVEN about knowing what the solution should be. It might off course seem a bit frightening and confusing to some people, depending of the company culture off course, to focus on vision and learning along the way what is the right thing to do.
The Agile Product Ownership (not role) is about trusting in the capabilities of the team, and the process of learning as a team, prototyping and testing to find what is valuable and deliver piece by piece. The every day of Agile business and working as a Product Owner is about delivering value. And it is so rewarding when you know that you can do that, even though you in the early stages had no idea what the solution would feel like or look like, and that was probably the only thing you could agree about 🙂 Being able to trust that process and using proper methods to learn and deliver valuable solutions piece by piece, and doing it over and over again. That is what good product ownership is about – and it´s teamwork, not a one mans job. (more…)
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