3. Organizational Context
• “Product manager” is a job title
• “Product owner” is an agile team role
• Overlapping, but very different scope and skills
• One-per-scrum-team poor fit for commercial software
• Work needs to get done, regardless of title
3
4. What Does a Product Manager Do?
For revenue software…
• Drives delivery and market
acceptance of whole
products
• Targets market segments,
not individual customers
4
5. What Does a Product Manager Do?
market information, priorities,
requirements, roadmaps, epics,
user stories, backlogs,
personas, MRDs…
product
bits
strategy, forecasts,
commitments, roadmaps,
competitive intelligence…
budgets, staff,
targets
field input,
market feedback
segmentation, messages,
benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
Markets &
Customers
Development Marketing
& Sales
Executives
Product
Management
5
6. Product Management: Inherently
Political
• Logic and facts are not enough
• HIPPO
• Sales teams paid to
subvert corporate goals
• Responsibility without authority
• Keep the process moving
6
7. What Product Hiring Managers Want
Tech product manager job postings
• 76% want 3+ years product
management experience
• 93% want excellent verbal and
written communication skills
• 68% want CS/EE
• 32% want MBAs
• 88% want experience in their
segment
7
8. Agile / Scrum
8
Product
Backlog
Features &
User Stories
Release
Backlog
Features &
User Stories
Sprint
Backlog
User Stories
Potentially
releasable
software
Software
release
Accepted
story
(“DONE”)
Review
Demo,
feedback
Retrospective
Process
improvement
1 day
Daily
Standup
Sprint: 1 to 3 weeks
No changes in duration or goal
Release
planning
Sprint
planning
Charter Release
Retrospective
Process
improvement
N sprints
9. Product Failures
9
Product
Backlog
Features &
User Stories
Release
Backlog
Features &
User Stories
Sprint
Backlog
User Stories
Potentially
releasable
software
Software
release
Accepted
story
(“DONE”)
Review
Demo,
feedback
Retrospective
Process
improvement
1 day
Daily
Standup
Sprint: 1 to 3 weeks
No changes in duration or goal
Release
planning
Sprint
planning
Charter Release
Retrospective
Process
improvement
N sprints
Most product failures
happen here
10. What does a Product Owner Do?
• “…represents the customer’s interest in
backlog prioritization and requirements
questions... available to the team at any time.”
• Provides intense sprint-level focus: stories,
backlog, prioritization, acceptance
• One product owner per team, not per product
• Wins development admiration and inclusion
• Feeds the hungry agile beast
10
11. Feeding the Agile Beast
Steam engine
“fireman” needs to
constantly shovel coal,
otherwise the train will
stop
11
13. PO/PM Scope
13
Product
Backlog
Features &
User Stories
Release
Backlog
Features &
User Stories
Sprint
Backlog
User Stories
Potentially
releasable
software
Software
release
Accepted
story
(“DONE”)
Review
Demo,
feedback
Retrospective
Process
improvement
1 day
Daily
Standup
Sprint: 1 to 3 weeks
No changes in duration or goal
Release
planning
Sprint
planning
Charter Release
Retrospective
Process
improvement
N sprints
product manager focus
product owner focus
14. Product Manager Has More Levers
• Engineering Output
• Product features
• Order of delivery
• Product / Market / Business
Model
• Pricing
• Competitive positioning
• Partners and Channels
• Services and Support
• Fit with corporate strategy
• Product split, merge or EOL
14
Product
manager
After: Greg Cohen
Product
owner
16. Absenteeism
• Teams with no formal product
owner/manager
• Short-term borrowing of untrained SMEs
• One product-somebody
per 3-10 teams
16
17. Product Management: Oversubscribed,
Overcommitted, Burning Out
• Most product management
teams already understaffed
• Product ownership adds
40-60% more critical work
• One product manager can
“do it all” for a single team
• But typical Dev:PM ratio is 35:1, not 10:1
17
18. How Development Organizations
Typically Pick Product Owners
• Internal borrowing
• SMEs with technical chops,
story writing experience,
“already know” the market
• No organizational blocking
or market-side skills
• Belief in rational/unemotional/technical customers
• Slant toward smartest users
18
19. Product Management Failure Mode
Product Manager fails agile team
when…
• Part-timer, not engaged with team
• Stale backlog, lack of story detail
• Best of intentions, but pulled in
too many directions
• “Build what I meant”
19
20. Product Owner Failure Mode
Product Owner fails markets
when…
• Weak on marketplace: pricing,
packaging, selling, upgrades,
competition, priorities
• Disconnected from Marketing
and Sales
• Only meets showcase
customers
20
21. Organizational Failure Mode
21
• Absent/understaffed product team
• Lack of market direction
• Technically complete
products that don’t sell
or projects that don’t matter
27. 90 Person Project (1 Product, 8
Teams)27
Product
Manage
r
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
MTEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
28. What Does Each Team Do?
28
Product
Manage
r
HEADLINE FEATURES PERFORMANCE
RE-ARCH
DRIVERS &
CONNECTORS
UX/UI
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
MTEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
TEAM
P
O
S
M
30. Wrong Product Owners!
30
PERFORMANCE
RE-ARCH
DRIVERS &
CONNECTORS
UX/UI
TEAM
S
M
TEAM
S
MTEAM
S
M
TEAM
S
M
TEAM
S
M
TEAM
S
M
TEAM
S
M
UX
Lead
HEADLINE FEATURES
TEAM
S
M
TME
Perf
Arch
Product
Mgr
Lead
Prod
Manager
31. Delegating to Product Owners
• No cookie-cutter solution, no magic formula
• Varies with scope, teams, technical depth, skills…
• What is this team working on? Who brings right talent mix?
• Full-time owners, not borrowed 10%
• Solid or strong dotted line to product management
• Vigorous daily discussion among product team
• Product management keeps whole-product
responsibility
31
32. Takeaways
1. Must fully staff product owner roles
• Not a sideline, not an add-on, not an afterthought
2. On large projects, product managers are not
default product owners for every team
3. Need to thoughtfully select/hire/train POs and
PMs
4. IMHO, cookie-cutter assignments endanger
outcomes
32
33. Rich Mironov
Mironov Consulting
233 Franklin Street, Suite
308
San Francisco, CA 94102
33
/in/RichMironov
@RichMironov
Rich@Mironov.com
+1-650-315-7394
HIPPO: highest paid person’s opinion
Engineering-driven, purely logical decision-making isn’t enough. Different goals, different opinions, timelines (current quarter), asking for more investigation as a way to veto proposals…
It’s not that a product owner is unable to do this much longer list of things. It’s that we don’t choose, train, mentor, measure or reward them for the broader set of things. And we keep them very busy with the short list.
That’s one of the reasons why agile delivers more/better – because they can finally get enough product ownership to build more of the right things.
“Our engineering lead writes the stories”
Huge positive Dev feedback
8.1 release: how many PMs are there on this effort?
“User First” is pulling PMs in another direction: more emphasis on customer needs, rather than detailed tech specs
ENG product managers have $150M to $300M each in product sales. There’s no way they can ignore Cisco sales, marketing and administrative demands. And a ton of customers they are each big enough to deserve special treatment
I’ve successfully handled all of product management and all of product ownership for one dev team of 11, at a great Bay Area startup. But that was with less corporate overhead, and a lot of experience.
Field sales engineers may be good candidates, but they already have more-than-full-time jobs closing business.
Pulled into exec briefing center, out on sales calls, into planning/management sessions
Q for devs: how many of expect your PM to reliably be in 80% of your standups?
PM = proDUCT Manager, PO = proDUCT Owner
Degenerative case: one person has to do it all. Suck it up.
How many POs does this imply for a division with 2500 engineers, likely 250 scrum teams?
Unworkable: lack of overall product coordination, typical for many PO slots to be unfilled
Scrum of scrums is primarily to address TECHNICAL issues, TECHNICAL dependencies, TECHNICAL architecture. Not impact on customers and markets of many subtle choices made daily.
Unworkable: lack of overall product coordination, typical for many PO slots to be unfilled
Scrum of scrums is primarily to address TECHNCIAL issues, TECHNICAL dependencies, TECHNICAL architecture. Not impact on customers and markets of many subtle choices made daily.
Holding back on determining if one PO can cover two teams. Still shows that we need a PM/PO team of around 6 to handle a project with 8 teams.
Negotiate explicit working agreements
If we have 2500 engineers in the division, that implies ~ 250 scrum teams, ~200 full-time PM+PO. Staying out of the politics of budgets and open reqs (who finds the heads), but someone may be 50 headcount short.
This entire go-agile (dEV Escape Velocity) effort is at risk if we ignore this problem