Note: This was originally posted on ThoughtWorks Insights blog (https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/iterating-product-owner-role-owner-assistant) , this is a repost to my Medium page
Increasingly, I see the difficulty organisations have in finding suitable people to take up a Product Owner (PO) role when adopting agile working practices. Even when the role is filled, the tasks of empowering the individual to a suitable level and giving them the knowledge of how to calculate true business value, are rarely accomplished.
I’ve always struggled with the PO role in agile. Firstly, there’s the question of where they fit — are they in the team or do they work beside the team? If they’re in the team, is there a core delivery group within the team that the PO is definitely not a part of? …
In Software Engineering, Agile practices like Scrum, Kanban or XP are not golden tickets to success, otherwise everyone would be using them exactly as their frameworks prescribe. Having the right principles is the most important yet most overlooked aspect of building a successful function and business (after people of course!).
I’ve worked for numerous large companies where Agile transformations have been attempted, either wholesale across the board or in small pockets. In both instances I’ve seen various levels of success and I believe that a common trap to fall into is to focus on specific Agile practices rather than the foundation level change that’s needed.
All too often someone reads a book where they pick up something from Google, Automattic or Spotify and they think that copying that ‘thing’ will be the answer they’ve been looking for. “What would Google do??” — copy+paste and expect success.
Spoiler alert — blindly copying practices from a successful Agile (/Software Engineering) company and expecting them to work for you isn’t going to end well! …
I can't wait for Apple Pay to come to the UK.
It’s a great solution, but it’s not quite a killer solution, yet. I say this because they've only fixed one part of the problem and I'm greedy, I want the whole thing. So when I pay via Apple Pay I want everything else involved in the transaction to auto-magically happen.
Apple have worked hard to make that happen with my card provider — but I want everything from the retailer too. How cool would it be to pay with Apple Pay and then get supermarket loyalty points updated, or Starbucks rewards pushed to your Starbucks account, all triggered in the single action of using Apple Pay. …
My three golden rules
When I was young I used to hate speaking in front of people. Whether it was an audience of two or twenty two I would do anything to avoid the attention.
I remember being in a French class at middle school where the teacher caught me using my favourite tactic of raising my hand to answer a question just as she asked someone else. I was busted, and had nowhere to hide at that moment. I still cringe at the thought!
As I entered the professional world I knew I had to address this fear so I forced my self to speak up, give presentations, and do anything else I could to get over it. …
A few months ago I resurrected my personal blog on squarespace.com. It’s a great platform for building websites of all kinds, and I've used it off and on for years.
The problem I found was that whenever I went to write a blog they were just way too long, and as I reviewed my posts I lost interest or spent too long trying to make them more interesting, always fearing that I was just ranting.
As a content consumer I adore Medium. It has become the most used app on my iPhone, or maybe joint most used along with Twitter. So I've decided to switch, hoping that the (usually) shorter posts here will encourage me to create more relevant and interesting content myself.
If this attempt fails, I'm done with personal blogging! Wish me luck.
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