Agile Know-How Magazine • Fall 2017
Do not tie your Product Owner to a fixed plan and understand
that the complexity of software development is such that it is
very difficult to accurately predict delivery dates for a specific
scope.
• As the prototype is an unfinished version of the solution it re-
presents, there is a cost to completing it. By adding new tests
or prototypes over it, you are compounding that cost. This is
called the “technical debt.”
• Often, prototypes do not meet quality norms, as opposed
to regular features. They may not be as robust and may be
more prone to defects. Building on them may decrease your
ability to develop better and faster.
• Keeping elements of that solution that have not been vali-
dated “just in case” creates added complexity to both the
code and the user experience.
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Not understanding the Product Owner
The role of the Product Owner is to maximize product value.
It is not always clear what this means for an organization. We
found that in many situations, this role is confounded with that
of a Product Manager, Business Analyst, or Project Manager.
Not understanding and supporting the role of the Product
Owner may cost the organization the loss of Product Agility
benefits.
Decision-making
Product Owners should be empowered to make any decision
regarding the product, including ceasing its development. In
traditional organizations, it may be difficult to delegate such
authority. In an Agile environment, use transparency and
collaboration to help and support your Product Owners in their
decisions. As an organization, you should trust your Product
Owner to learn from their own mistakes, not yours.
Empiricism
Product Owners believe that experience is the best source of
knowledge and that decisions are based on such knowledge.
There is no fixed plan on the table, and definitely no Gantt
chart. They are zealous about measuring everything. Their
plan can change periodically.
Collaboration
Product Owners believe that collaboration creates better
products. They seek to bring together all the product’s
stakeholders to review product increments and to plan. They
use tools to make all the data and decisions visible to everyone
and openly ask that anyone who may have a positive impact
on the product get involved.
Help your Product Owners by supporting their stakeholders,
including the product users.
They possess more empathic abilities than
management skills
Product Owners must be able to breathe the same air as the
users and share their pains. Their core function is to optimize
the product’s value by ordering the work to be done. They
focus on the problem space and product value.
As an organization, do not ask the Product Owner to constant-
ly complete a progress report, review job status, or evaluate
“resource” performance.
Today’s organizations compete on all levels: marketing,
recruitment, products, services, financing, and so on.
Achieving Product Agility becomes a key benefit of digital
transformation.
Want to deliver high value-added products?
Read our posts on Agile product development on
Agile Know-How.
agileknowhow.com/agileproductmanagement/ :
To understand how to develop better products by
taking advantage of Agile and Lean practices, take
our new Agile Product Management course.
pyxis-tech.com/agile-product-management/ :
1 Field of Dreams (1989), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097351/
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