Three common factors inhibiting Product Owners from maximizing value

“When is the product done?” A frequently asked question to any Product Owner. The very short answer to this question; it never is. There will always be something to do. But here’s the thing; when I ask questions like “what does the Product Vision look like” to the Product Owners I’ve worked with, they can immediately shout it out. Like it’s at the tip of their tongue, waiting for someone to ask that question. And that’s awesome!

It becomes eerily quiet though when I ask how stakeholders can understand what our progress is toward the Vision and what still needs to be done to get there. My experience is that Product Owners are dealing with organizational forces “bigger” than them that inhibit the ability to drive the product. For instance, the Product Owner has to deal with prerequisite metrics or other factors that are dragging their focus away. Away from the customer and user needs. Here are three of the most common ones in my experience;

1. Pointless metrics weaken the ability to pivot

Measurements and metrics have always been a hot topic, ever since the “Agile movement” started. I’ve been working with quite a number of teams now, and I’ve rarely seen any of them checking the relative progress toward the achievement of the Product Vision. Sometimes nothing was measured when I started, sometimes the organization required hollow metrics like:

• Actual versus forecasted velocity