Three Product-Centric Challenges for Coaching Agile Teams

Being customer-centric and identifying stakeholder needs and pain points are core functions of a Product Manager. What happens if Product Management skill sets are in the infancy stage within an organization? While a company undergoes an Agile Transformation, how can we shift waterfall thinking into new Agile paradigms when interacting with clients?

Intent

We will examine three different scenarios inspired by common organizational challenges to address the above questions. The exercises intend to aid Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches in coaching, mentoring, facilitating, and educating Agile teams.

Audience

• Agile Coaches
• Product Owners
• Business Analysts
• Agile teams seeking to develop deeper client partnerships

Let’s begin.

The following three scenarios come from real-life, inspired circumstances. Companies and people are a work of fiction.

Scenario One — Technical Solutioning

Mary, a long-time employee at Acme Tech, was recently elevated to the role of Product Owner. She has inherited an older Health Check application and must solicit Caleb's feature requirements, an operational user known to have lofty ideas. When Mary and Caleb meet via video conferencing, Caleb informs Mary he can grant her 15 minutes of his time to discuss his big concept. Mary accepts Caleb’s offer, and he proceeds to jump into the new feature request, an e-thermometer, which he believes will revolutionize Health Check.

Caleb, who has an engineering background, uses the majority of the time to describe the technical solution outlining how the e-thermometer will work, the integration points, and relays which programming language will work best.

At one point, Mary can finally interrupt Caleb and asks him to describe the value proposition for his feature request. Given that the call is about to close, Caleb provides a vague statement illustrating how the e-thermometer will aid the company’s bottom line and revive an older application. Mary is unclear how Caleb has come to his conclusion. Caleb directs the conversation back to the technical solution stating how it will be easy to implement.

After the call closes, Mary’s Director Peter, inquires about the high-level business feature description, leaving Mary unsure how to respond.

Next Steps:

1. Teams can role-play, taking turns assuming the position of Mary, Caleb, and Peter.
2. Either role-play the scenario as presented with alternative endings or role-play from the start and reinvent the interaction flow.
3. If role-playing is not a preferred method of exploration, use the below questions to assess and discover new outcomes.

Questions

• What could Mary have done differently at the beginning, during, and ending of Caleb's call?
• Is Caleb considered a stakeholder?
• What was the intent of the call? Was it clear? If not, how could Mary have made it clear?
• How did the duration of the call impact the quality of Mary and Caleb’s conversation? What steps would you take in this situation?
• When Mary realized Caleb was diving into solutions, what strategies could she have used to navigate the conversation to business value? (Shifting from the how to the what).
• What can Peter do to support Mary?

Scenario Two — Increased Scope

Priya is a Business Analyst working for PACE, a telecom company seeking to digitalize its customer invoices. PACE is undergoing an Agile Transformation. Priya is shifting her mindset from capturing all business requirements upfront to writing short, value-driven user stories based on discrete and shippable work. Priya is in the middle of a demo with two stakeholders, Jenn, Client Success Director for direct to consumer, and Domenic, Client Success Manager for B2B. The following conversation unfolds.

“Now that we have reviewed the proposed solution to add the intuitive customer payment date to invoices, do you have any questions?” Priya inquires.

“Well, I like the simplicity in navigation and ease of use; however, I feel the intuitive piece should be further integrated across another feature for internet service refunds,” chimes Domenic.

“Yes, I agree with you, Domenic, and was also going to suggest we make the payment date field blue and move it into the main page,” exclaims Jenn.

Priya scans the original customer payment date feature and makes a mental note of Domenic, and Jenn’s requests fall outside of the original ask. Priya, who is aware she is speaking with two Directors, feels compelled to say yes to the new ask. If you were Priya, how would you respond?

Next Steps:

1. Teams can role-play, taking turns assuming the position of Priya, Domenic, and Jenn.
2. Either role-play the scenario as presented with alternative endings or role-play from the start and reinvent the interaction flow.
3. Like the first scenario, if role-playing is not a preferred method of exploration, please discuss potential new outcomes using the below questions.

Questions:

• How can Priya start the call with stakeholders to ensure a common understanding of the feature request?
• Do you identify with the feelings of wanting to accommodate stakeholders when they are in a higher position within the organization?
• What are different communication strategies to ensure clients stay on topic and prevent scope creep?
• If Priya moves ahead with the proposed changes and deviations from original requirements, what are the imagined repercussions?
• How will Priya know if the new requests make the best business sense?

Scenario Three — Navigating The System

Jamal is a new Product Owner at Excel-Invest, a FinTech company. Not long into his role, Jamal notices a perceived sense of hierarchy, a system where people are protective of their areas. He intends to finish building a time-sensitive product roadmap for the company’s in-house trading platform.

When Jamal attempts to book a meeting with the VP of Marketing & Branding, Susan, Lindy, the Marketing Director blocks Jamal. When Jamal meets with Lindy, he discovers she does not possess the in-depth feature knowledge and edge cases he requires to seek clarification. Jamal is left feeling low and disempowered without having a voice and unsure of how to navigate the organization to get the required information.

Similar to exercise one and two, the same next steps apply:

1. Teams can role-play, taking turns assuming the position of Jamal, Lindy, and Susan.
2. Either role-play the scenario as presented with alternative endings or role-play from the start and reinvent the interaction flow. In particular, pay attention to the role of Susan and the choice of whether she will participate.
3. Once again, if role-playing is not a preferred method of exploration, discuss potential new outcomes using the below questions.

Questions

1. How can Jamal create a direct line to Susan, his prime stakeholder?
2. When clients are busy, what are other ways to ensure engagement?
3. In your experience, what are motivational factors causing people to become protective of their domain within organizations?
4. How can Jamal emerge stronger from his experience and overcome feelings of disempowerment?

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