Product Owner is an investor

Product Owner role is usually more understandable for companies that the ScrumMaster role. After all, companies have someone responsible for the product or business. So that’s the candidate. The problem starts when we deep dive into the role understanding and find out that Product owner shall not only understand the business but needs an authority to say “NO”. If you don’t, we mostly end up being late, with stress and low product quality.

How the Product Owner shall decide on priorities and how shall they know when to say “NO”? Overall it’s simple. Apply simplicity rule. It’s already in the Agile Manifesto as one of the principles. ‘We maximize the work not done.’ It has its roots in the research saying that 60% of a successfully delivered product is never or rarely used. So why do we keep investing into those features. Isn’t it waste? It is. But it’s hard to say no, so Product Owners keep prioritizing those features. Instead they shall act as investors and evaluate if the expected benefit will be paid off. If yes, do that. If not, let’s start a conversation or a negotiation with the customers about what else can we do to help them with what they need. The functionality they asked for are just one option how to achieve it.

Who is the great Product Owner?

  • The great Product Owner is an investor – imagine you would invest your own money into functionality you prioritize for the next Sprint.
  • The great Product Owner must have an authority to say NO.
  • The great Product Owner must be good at communication, always search for another option how to deliver maximum value to the customers with least possible effort.
  • The great Product Owner shall understand that your customers (internal stakeholders, users, … ) have wishes. Those wishes often contradict with each other so you can’t make them all even if you have unlimited resources. It’s up to you to decide where the highest value is, and skip the rest.
  • The great Product Owner must have business knowledge about the product and understand the customers – it’s not a technical role.
  • The great Product Owner shall have a time to spend with the team to build good relationship with them, and to make sure your team understands the purpose of the product/release/Sprint.

If you don’t have all those, don’t worry. But eventually that’s who you shall become as a Product Owner.

Agile Prague Conference

Agile Prague Conference, which I organize in Prague every year, has already been  here for 6 years. We are sold-out again (the only way how to get to Agile Prague 2016 is to attend LeSS workshop). This time we were already sold-out one month before the event, which is going to be 12-13 Sep 2016 this year. But don’t worry. We don’t want to make it bigger next year. Our mission is to offer the best of the best speakers with hands on experience on Agile, Scrum, Kanban, XP practices, but also share experiences from leaders of Agile organizations with their transformation, Scaling, etc.  We don’t want to grow, as the biggest part of the conference learning is hidden in conversation you can have with other participants and our creative thinkers – the speakers. In order to make it possible, we can’t be too big. I’m attending several huge events every year (Agile 20xx with over 2500 participants and Global Scrum Gatherings with over 1200) and compare the learning and experience I got there with small local events I’ve been speaking at (Big Apple Scrum Day (NYC), Scan-Agile, AgileSlovenia, ACE, … ). I like the smaller events better. It’s compact, easier to approach speakers, easier to reach into people again and build on top of the conversation we started before we all run to another session.

Every year we try to attract the best international speakers and bring their ideas and experiences to the Czech Republic. We are small country so it is very unique opportunity for our local Agile community to look at Agile in wider context. As the program is high quality and our conference is getting great references from past year audience and speakers, we attract more and more participants from Europe and other countries.

So if you’ve never been to Prague you can already mark the next year date into your calendars – it’s going to be Sep 11-12, 2017. We do our best to attract wonderful speakers for you again. If you are a speaker and you or your family never got a time to go for holiday to Prague, submit your talk next year and we give you awesome opportunity to combine conference and sightseeing all together. We offer a private guide to our speakers and their families (so they have a program with us while you are at the conference). You will not only have an opportunity to speak at one of the best Central European events but also can enjoy history, and local atmosphere with us.

Looking forward to see you this year at Agile Prague Conference, and hope to see you next year again.