5min book review #12

Geoff Watts: Product Mastery. From Good to Great Product Ownership

Value for money

9/10

Ebook or Bookshelf?

This deserves a place on your bookshelf.

Year, Price, Pages, Cover design

2017 by Inspect & Adapt Ltd; EUR 18,99; 287 pages (The content itself 267 pages; Appendix 3 pages; Acknowledgments 2 pages; References 5 pages: Index 5 pages); Paperback

Edited by Rebecca Traeger; Design and illustrations by Ole H. Størksen

5 sentences about the book

The author presents very concrete possible scenarios and desired behaviours for beginners. At the same time, it is a great source of basic knowledge for advanced product managers who have been doing their job automatically for a while now and are willing to remind themselves of the reason behind their actions. It is an excellent choice in terms of “value for money”

• Decisive — willing and able to make decisions with incomplete information, and to allow others to make decisions too
• Ruthless — maintaining a relentless drive to maximize value and minimise risk while staging focused on the vision
• Informed — cultivating a voracious appetite to know the most possible about your product’s domain while being prepared to act with incomplete information
• Versatile — being responsive to changing circumstances, both in terms of product development techniques and also leadership style
• Empowering — create a sense of shared ownership amongst all stakeholders and bring people along with you on the journey
• Negotiable — having faith in one’s vision while also being open to feedback and change (21)

In each chapter containing two sections, the author depicts a particular situation or context. In the background of everyday life, he is able to recognize and distinguish between good and great product owners’ behaviour and so provide a perspective not only on what should be done correctly but even better.

What did I learn?

• I found the chapter about the decision-making process most useful for two reasons that are overlooked and suppressed in daily life:

I love Geoff agnostic approach to pick up prioritisation strategy based on the context and so be able to decide accordingly

The product owner is a part of the product team and very often certain decisions rely on expertise given by his/her teammates

• Ruthless: remember “No” means “Not now” — how many conflicts and misunderstandings would we avoid when translating “No” this way?
• Informed: recognize and reduce bias via research and searching for data. The art of asking questions and listening can be mastered daily, for instance, using simple techniques to play back what you heard rather than immediately shooting your own opinion.
• Negotiable: Choose an iterative approach instead of trying to get the product perfect for the first time

What was missing?

• I missed the stories when the author is mixing decisiveness, ruthless, informed, versatile, empowering and negotiable together and so tune and balance them according to the context. For instance, I missed stories where ruthless vs versatile approaches are mixed together. Here are the author’s definitions of

ruthless: “Ruthless refers to the idea that product owners cannot allow sentiment to undermine what is best for the product, the organisation, the users and the customers. As such, great product owners understand the need to mercilessly reject certain features and even products, at least for now, in favour of those that are more valuable” 65

versatile: “Great product owners are also driven to be flexible and versatile, able to adapt in a volatile environment. Great product owners strive to be self-assured without being dogmatic or inflexible; they realize that they can never know everything and are open to changing course based on feedback. New information or data” 145

It could be challenging for someone (especially for a beginner) to be a ruthless and versatile product owner at the same time. In my experience, only practice (and by that I mean “trial & error” mode) will teach you how to tune your ruthless/versatile approach in the given context. When your decisions are driven by data and by taking into consideration the expertise of teammates and stakeholders, you are more (or less) ruthless and less (or more) versatile in a given specific situation. In my understanding, Ruthless & Versatile are like Bass & Treble frequency spectrum in your product hi-fi management amplifier.

Favorite quotes

“But how do agile product owners decide which product and which feature is the most important? Most often, product owners try to make these decisions based on which features provide the most value. However, value is often subjective and can be an elusive thing to define. Numerous prioritisation strategies exist, with no ‘one size fits all’ approach. As such, great product owners tend to adapt their prioritization strategy to the context they are currently facing, with the goal of maximising value and reducing risk as early as possible” 40

“Many product owners who left their perfectionist trait get out of hand to fall into the trap of trying to get the product perfect all at once, the first time. They are unable to make the tough call required to deliver iteratively and are therefore unable to use feedback and learning to allow the perfect product to emerge over time” 251