Do We Act Like Product Owners?
A few weeks ago, my big sister and I were talking about buying plane tickets and how to manage our travel together. She’s a bit stressed by nearly everything uncertain (life, I suppose).
She told me: “I don’t Know how to deal with cancelled planes and all this stuff, I’m not a Product Owner like you say”. Really? Let’s have a look!
What’s a Product Owner ?
A Product Owner is a member of a Scrum Team with the Scrum Master and the a Cross Functional Dev Team (3 to 9 members), generalists and specialists like we covered in this article. They are the 3 pillars of the Scrum Team; each of them work together to achieve a common Goal.
The Product Owner (PO) is the Value maximizer of the outcome, which is the product delivered to the User. The Team works Empirically, we make assumptions based on facts (User interviews, Experiences, Data…) and try it on the market. The only true thing is the outcomes, not our assumptions!
The Outcome helps the team increment the product thanks to the market feedbacks. Each outcome/feedback is an opportunity to learn and improve. This is the Kaizen Philosophy From The Toyota Motor Company.
Being a Product Owner is taking decision in uncertainty, setting priorities, being pragmatic and communicating around us to reach the Goal. As a Product Owner, if we achieve the goal, it’s thanks to the team’s effort and if we fail, the responsibility for the product rests on us. Our only goal is to build a product as good as possible by helping in every possible way, this is the Servant Leadership.
The Agile Framework aims at dealing with Complexity, it acknowledges that most of our plans can go south. What matters is our flexibility and ability to see the opportunities in the outcomes.
Organizing a birthday Party!
We all organized a Birthday party for a friend once in our lives. This is a good example to introduce Scrum because a well organized Party is organized by a look a like Scrum Team!
We assume that my sister aka “Big Sis” has a Best friend Nat, her birthday is in 1 Week. “Big Sis” decides to gather a group of 3 to 9 other friends (The Dev Team) to do something (The Product) for Nat (User = StakeHolder).
Nat talked a lot to “Big Sis” about her desire to spend a fun evening like the good old days (User interview). So, The A-Team (“Big Sis” + Dev Team) set the goal “Organizing The Perfect Night”(Sprint Goal).
What Does the Team Do?
“Big Sis” knows Nat likes to be surprised! (Market Expertise) The A-Team supposes that What Nat wants for her Birthday is a surprise party.
They Brainstorm a little and decide there is 3 main things to have: Music, Little Games and things to Drink or Eat (Artefacts in the Backlog).
The Team conclude they need to find a DJ, “Smart” Games to Play together, a place to meet, Drinks and Food to eat. Not Knowing enough informations on all these topics “Big Sis” asks a lot of question starting “Why” to the Experts in the A-Team (Legwork).
After having understood the “Big picture” thanks to the Experts, “Big Sis” prioritizes the tasks in agreement with the Team, from the most valuable to the least valuable (Product Backlog Order). It goes like this: A meeting place for 50 people, DJ, Games, Drinks and Food.
The group of friends begin to do the work, finding the place, the DJ etc. “Big Sis” reach other friends (Those Who finance = Stakeholders) to explain the Goal (Show Product Vision), invite them and collect money for the expenses and the gift.
Every day, Max (Scrum Master) from the A-Team ensures that everybody (Dev Team) talk together for a maximum of 15 minutes to be sure what to do during the day (Daily Scrum).
Unfortunately, after contacting the other friends “Big Sis” informed the group that of the 50 people only 40 can go to the party (Feedback). Immediately the Team thought of a new smaller place to meet that would cost less. Therefore, they thought this was a good opportunity to use more money on the gift to get a better One!(Opportunity = Improving the Product).
The rest of the organization goes smoothly, The birthday finally arrived! The night goes well, Nat had fun and is pleased with the gift, most of the friends are pleased too. The next day The A-Team receive some feedbacks, they talked with the guests about the DJ and the food and discussed the improvements for the next birthday party(Sprint Review).
In fact, in this story, “Big Sis” properly handled the party by providing useful insights, letting each member of the A-Team do what they do best and self-organizing. “Big Sis” was the value maximizer of the party, she was the PO!
I explained this example to her, and she said.
“This is what we try, the outcome is almost never what we expected but it always ends well” Big Sis
After all, she is may not be as bad Product owner as she thinks! But even with these explanations, I had to take care of the plane tickets (Hi Ulysse Travel!)
