“Product Owner” Is the Most Misunderstood Role in Scrum
Most adaptations of the Product Owner function invalidate the Product Owner role
Scrum is all about creating products of the highest value in complex product environments. Here’s why:
“In today’s fast-paced, fiercely competitive world of commercial new product development, speed and flexibility are essential. Companies are increasingly realizing that the old, sequential approach to developing new products simply won’t get the job done.” — The New New Product Development Game by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka
If you are unfamiliar with this quote, then it may surprise you that it is from 1986. It is 34 years old. It comes from the paper that introduced the first concepts of Scrum: The New New Product Development Game.
Since then the world only became vastly more fast-paced, more unpredictable, more complex. Products that used to be popular last year have become obsolete by now. What will be successful next year, nobody knows. With that, long term detailed planning is ineffective. The sequential approach to developing new products has become even more nonsensical than in 1986.
Still, many organisations have not come to realise this. They have tailored Scrum to fit into their traditional…
