What the heck is a product owner? What's this Product Owner role, what do teams expect of Product Owners, what do Execs expect, what defines success, and where do Product Owners fit within product management? Presenter: Ron Lichty Ron Lichty has been managing software development and product organizations for 30 years at companies of all sizes, the most recent 15 years as a VP Engineering and VP Product. He is the author of Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams, http://www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net. He advises and coaches business, product and engineering leaders how to make their software development "hum". http://www.ronlichty.com

1. What the Heck Is a
Product Owner?
Ron Lichty, principal, Ron Lichty Consulting
author, Managing the Unmanageable
www.RonLichty.com www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net1

2. 2
Transforming Chaos to Clarity

3. Training Leaders & Teams: Agile
1-4 weeks
3

4. 4
Untangling Knots in
Development and Product Teams

5. Consult:
Untangling the Knots; Making Things Hum
• process
• culture
• communication
• planning
• rigor
5

6. * Addison Wesley6

7. The Study of Product Team Performance
http://www.ronlichty.com/study.html
7

8. Ron Lichty,
Managing Development & Product Teams
SOFTWEST
8

9. So What the Heck’s
a Product Owner?
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 9

10. Survey
• Who are you?
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 10

11. 11
We Know Product Owners
Are Part of the Scrum Team
ScrumTeam.jpg (from Exploring Scrum- the Fundamentals, by Dan Rawsthorne & Doug Shimp)

12. Why Do We Need 3 Roles?
• team: developers, testers, UX, tech writer
– building the product
• Scrum Master
– helping people work together and be effective
• Product Owner
– guiding the product

13. Product Teams Rely on Product Owners
Engineering is about making
things right.
Product Management is about
making the right things.
—Marty Cagan, author, Inspired

14. Product Teams Rely on Product Owners
There’s nothing more wasteful
than brilliantly engineering a
product that doesn’t sell,
or a project that
doesn’t matter.

15. Where Do Product Owners Fit?

16. Product Management is a huge challenge

17. Product Owner is a subset of Product Management

18. Conversations, market information,
priorities, requirements,
roadmaps, epics, user stories,
backlogs, personas…
product
bits
strategy, forecasts,
commitments, roadmaps,
competitive intelligence
budgets, staff,
targets
Field input,
Market feedback
Segmentation, messages,
benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
Markets &
CustomersDevelopment
Marketing
& Sales
Executives
Product
Management
What Does a Product Manager Do?
www.MIRONOV.com 18

19. backlog, priorities,
epics, user stories,
personas, demo feedback
product
bits
Markets &
CustomersDevelopment
Marketing
& Sales
Executives
Product
Owner
What Does a Product Owner Do?
www.MIRONOV.com 19
showcase
customers

20. Product Owner Responsibilities
• Communicate Product Vision
• Craft Product Roadmap / Identify 1st project
• Write Story Cards: high level / customer view
• Own, order, maintain the Product Backlog
• Detail Top-of-Backlog Stories / Acceptance Tests
• Always available to explain stories
• Decide what to do if product problems arise
• Ensure the value of work Team performs
• Perform Acceptance Tests
• Manage Stakeholders

21. Prioritize
• Customers want to know that the team is working on
what will benefit them most
• Developers want to know they’re working on the stuff
customers will value most!
• There is no such thing as “2 top priorities”!
• “If everything is a priority, nothing is a
priority.”
— Sheila Brady, Apple project management guru
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 21

22. Prioritization: Both Necessary and Hard
• Speed of ideation far exceeds speed of development
– the Good Idea Train pulls into the product station every day
with hundreds of “good ideas”
• Internal demand for engineering always >> supply
• Inherently political
– must balance interests of competing stakeholders
• Responsibility without authority
• Decisions are only semi-quantitative
• Must balance deliverables with strategy
– short term with long term
– must weight objectives

23. Product Ownership Is Inherently Political
• Teams need Product Owners to say ‘no’
• “Thank you! That’s a really interesting idea. Let me
put it into the backlog.”
• Never agree without some measure of dev sizing

24. Product Owner truths
• Agile stretches product organizations
• Understaffed: we need 1 PO/team
– we need 1 PO/team: 1 PO to “do it all” for each agile team
• Provide product-level vision
• Build trust, promote cross-functional good will
• Provide intense sprint-level focus
– theme, stories, backlog, prioritization, acceptance
• Provide the heat shield for escalations
• Available to the team at any time
• Feed the hungry agile beast

25. Feeding the Agile Beast
Steam engine
“firemen” need to
shovel coal
constantly,
otherwise the
train will stop

26. Scrum Team Roles
• Product Owner: feeds the beast Stories
– the “what”
• plus context: the “who” and the “why”
• team: developers, testers, UX, tech writer
– the “how”

27. Engineering Relies on Product Owners
Never tell people 'how' to do things.
Tell them 'what' to do and they will
surprise you with their ingenuity.
—General George S. Patton

28. Product Owners: Optimize for Value
If you aren’t bargain hunting most items before
you build them, you’re not maximizing the
amount of work not done. Invite the team to
propose 3+ implementation approaches
(e.g. adjust scope, remove bells & whistles)
to find high value at low cost.
—Joshua Kerievsky, CEO, Industrial Logic

29. The “What” plus the “Who” & “Why”
As a <some kind of user>
I want to <do something>
in order to <accomplish some goal>
Who
What
Why
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 29

30. Why Include the “Why”
“Building software off just a list of requirements
misses out a lot business context - developers are
told what to do without being told why it's
important. The why often makes a big difference
in doing the what properly.”
--Martin Fowler
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 30

31. Scrum/Sprint Workflow, labeled
1-4 weeks
Retrospect

32. Scrum Workflow
Project initiation and planning... -> Development via iterative sprints

33. Product Owner Roles:
Lead, Participate, Attend, Skip?
• Story Mapping
• Story Writing
• Defining “Done”
• Story Sizing
• Story Valuing
• Backlog Ordering
• Story Refinement
• Sprint Planning
• Daily Standups
• Retrospectives

34. Ownership?
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 34

35. Ownership?
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 35

36. Ordering Is More than ROI
• Good user-story ordering is a collaboration with Eng
– take dependencies into account
– support risk-first development
• reduce uncertainty
– enable design to emerge
– test architecture

37. The Backlog Is More than User Stories
• Technical Product Backlog Items (Technical PBIs)
– pay down technical debt
– build foundational stuff / architecture
– fix outstanding bugs
– non-functional requirements
– reduce uncertainty / technical risk

38. The Backlog Is More than User Stories
• Technical Product Backlog Items (Technical PBIs)
The deal with engineering goes like this: Product
management takes 20% of the team's capacity right off
the top and gives this to engineering to spend on...
whatever they believe is necessary to avoid ever having
to come to the team and say, 'we need to stop and
rewrite'.... I get nervous when I find teams that think
they can get away with much less than 20%.
--Marty Cagan, Inspired

39. Sprint Planning
• Team pulls cards
– not assigned by anyone: not SM, not PO
• Goal: a perfect Sprint Plan
– close with a Fist-to-Five confidence vote

40. Let Developers Focus
• Avoid interruptions
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 40

41. Let Developers Focus
• Avoid interruptions
• Prevent mid-sprint tangents
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 41

42. Let Developers Focus
• Avoid interruptions
• Prevent mid-sprint tangents
• Avoid developer multitasking
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 42

43. Understand what Motivates Programmers
• Making a difference…
From Managing the Unmanageable:, by Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty, based on Frederick Herzberg’s seminal work
in the 1950s identifying and differentiating motivators and de-motivators. 43

44. Share the Big Picture
• Connect the dots
– The big picture
– What each team member is contributing
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 44

45. In the beginning, everyone will talk about scope,
and budget, and schedule, but in the end,
nobody really cares about any of those things.
The only thing they care about is this:
People will love your software, or they won’t.
So that’s the only criterion to which you
should truly manage.
—Joseph Kleinschmidt, CTO, now a CEO
* 1 of 300 rules of thumb in the center section of Managing the Unmanageable
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 45
Focus on What Matters*

46. Ron Lichty Consulting
• Mentoring, coaching, training, consulting:
– http://ronlichty.com, Ron@RonLichty.com
• The book:
Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools & Insights for Managing Software People & Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net <-----tools, excerpts, more rules of thumb
• Video training:
LiveLessons: Managing Software People and Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net/video.html
• The study:
The Study of Product Team Performance
– http://ronlichty.com/study.html
• Training:
The Agile Manager
Managing Software People and Teams
Zero to Agile in Three Days
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 46

47. Informit.com/lichty
Save 50% on Video Training
• Use code VIDEO50
Save 35% on Book
• Use code SWDEV35
• Good on print, eBooks, and video
• eBook files include PDF, EPUB, and MOBI
Offer only good at informit.com
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48. Ron Lichty Consulting
• Mentoring, coaching, training, consulting:
– http://ronlichty.com, Ron@RonLichty.com
• The book:
Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools & Insights for Managing Software People & Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net <-----tools, excerpts, more rules of thumb
• Video training:
LiveLessons: Managing Software People and Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net/video.html
• The study:
The Study of Product Team Performance
– http://ronlichty.com/study.html
• Training:
The Agile Manager
Managing Software People and Teams
Zero to Agile in Three Days
Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 48

49. Ron Lichty: What the Heck Is a Product Owner? 49