The Scrum Product Owner needs to bring creative thinking to the team and to the product development. This was presented at the Atlanta Scrum Gathering 2012.

1. Becoming a Creative
Product Owner
Bringing Creativity to your Product
and Development Teams
Allen Bennett
Agile Practice Lead
SITA
May 7, 2012 Scrum Gathering Atlanta
CMM and CMMI registered Service Marks of Carnegie Mellon University © 2002

2. Allen Bennett
• Agile Practice Lead SITA
• Certified Scrum Master
• Certified Product Owner
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt,
Photo by tuppus
• Software Development Manager, Software
Process Improvement, CMMI – ITT 21 years
Photo by by Monica's Dad Photo by UWMadArchives
Photo by JD Hancock
2 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

3. SITA - Société Internationale de
Télécommunications Aéronautiques
• SITA is the worlds leading specialist in
communications, and IT solutions for the air
transport industry.
• 500 Air Transport industry members
• 2,700 Customers
• 200 Countries
• Employs 140 nationalities speaking over
70 languages
3 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

4. Presentation Outline
• Examine The Role of the Product Owner
• Compare the Creative Styles
• Da Vinci Creativity
• Edison Inventiveness
• Steve Jobs Entrepreneurship
• 13 Thinking Tools
• Practice a few skills
• Improv – AL’s Swiss Army Knife
• Yes, and … Mobile App
• Creative Collaboration
• Resource List
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5. The Role of the Product Owner
• Convey Product Vision to the team
• Prioritize The Product Backlog
• Negotiate the work to be completed in a sprint
• Slice the backlog to get highest value
delivered
• Be available to team during the sprint
• Accept work product as done
• Iterate based on feedback
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6. What is different about Scrum?
Way of Working
• Focused, empowered teams
• Small increments
• Plan to change
• Collaborate with stakeholders
Way of Thinking
• Root out waste and inefficiencies
• Inspect and Adapt
• Use every mind
Way of life
• Customer first
• Value the individual
• Reward the team
• Continuous learning from - voice of the customer, v…process, v..people
6 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

7. SITA E-Commerce Air India Engagement
Day 1 of Customer Day 2 – Prioritized Backlog
Collaboration
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8. SITA enters into Collaboration Agreement with Internal
Stakeholders
Customer
Solution
Line
Global
Quality
Manager
Stakeholders
Project Status, Metrics
Product Backlog
Product Backlog
Scrum
Product Master Definition of
Owner Done
Customer
•QA Standards
• Dev Standards Working
Scrum Team • ...
• ...
Software
Operations

9. Exercise 1
Every Agile Leader needs an army knife
“Yes, and…..”
“It is equipped with a…..
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10. You are creative and you can be more
creative
• Creative Style Profile
Beverly Kaye and Beverly Olevin
Recognize your Creative Style and the styles on your team
• Connector – You are perceptive-oriented: Playful, observant, and
light-hearted
• Dreamer – You are receptive-oriented: instinctual, imaginative and
insightful
• Innovator – You are goal-oriented: entrepreneurial, adaptive, and
motivated
• Builder – You are visually-oriented: artistic, detailed and resourceful
• Explorer – You are action-oriented: adventurous, risk-taking,
unconventional
10 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

11. Diversity of the Team –
essential ingredients
• IDEO CEO Tom Kelly CEO “The 10 faces of
Innovation”
• The power of multi-disciplinary teams
• There is power in Empowerment –
• Give it to the team
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12. The Creative Dance
1. Elicit Customer Needs, Wants, Desires
2. Abstracted into Product Back Log
3. Synthesize by priorities, realities, and risks
4. Decomposed into implementable story for or by team
5. Model acceptance criteria
6. Transformed into working software
7. Reflects the technical excellence agreed by team
8. Meets the definition of done
9. Demonstrated to the Customer
Return to step 1
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13. Getting the most you can from the team
• Select - Putting people in the right job
• Connect – The need for the Human Moment,
creating the simpler environment
• The Brain is Plastic – You can fix stupid, at any
age
• Play – bringing our imagination into work
• Grapple and Grow – we need a challenge
• Shine – Value of recognition
Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People
by Edward M. Hallowell
13 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

14. Exercise 2
• At your tables collaborate to create a Mobile Application
or a Wearable Appliance that will serve a user group
associated with planning, attending, or serving the Scrum
Gathering
• Write a one or two sentence description of the app
[permalink]
14 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

15. One of the Agile Goals:
Produce State of Flow
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Create a state of Flow – Brain Lights up.
• Stuart Brown research on value of play
• Create an energetic environment with a sustainable high
productivity
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16. Leonardo Thinking
Seven Principles
• Curiosity Seek the truth
• Get Lost in the work Learn from mistakes
• Use all you senses Cultivate awareness
• Open to ambiguity Open to paradox and uncertainty
• Whole Brain Try Mind-Mapping
• Mind the Body Integrate body and spirit
• Interconnectedness All things are connected
How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Michael J. Gelb
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17. Can we shift the thinking of the team?
White Hat: Neutral and objective, concerned with facts and figures
Red Hat: the emotional view
Black Hat: careful and cautious
Yellow Hat: sunny and positive
Green Hat: fertile growth, creativity, new ideas
Blue Hat: cool, the color of the sky, above everything else,
organizing, process The Six Thinking Hats by Ed De Bono
17 Photo by Orin Zebest
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18. Using Hats in Retrospective or Collaborative
Engagements
+ ∆
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19. The Greatest
Artist, Actor, Astronomer, Astronaut, Architect, Analyst
Painter, Potter, Planner, Programmer,
Sculpture, Scientist,
Teacher, Tailor, Tech Writer, Tester
Doctor, Designer, Developer
All use the same Creative Techniques
Some do it to the Extreme
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20. We can learn these techniques
• Innovate Like Edison, Gelb and Caldicott
• Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Gelb
• Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Gallo
If you or your organization are unfamiliar with the
practical attitudes, thinking, and communication
skills
necessary for innovation, then innovation is
unlikely
to occur.
P 9 Innovate Like Edison, Michael j. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott, 2007
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21. Edison Innovation Literacy
5 Competencies
1. Solution Centered Mindset
Objectivity, Persistence, Relentless, Optimism. Passion
2. Kaleidoscope Thinking Photo by crdotx
Visual Images , Patterns, Ideaphoria, Exploration, Keep Notes
3. Full Spectrum Engagement
Individual and Team, Complexity and Simplicity, Sharing and
Protecting, Work and Play, Stress and Relax
4. Mastermind Collaboration
Network, Value Teamwork, Openness, Cross-Functional
5. Super-Value Creation
Create unforgettable brand, understand scalability, value proposition,
know your customer, build on your strengths
Innovate Like Edison, Michael j. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott, 2007
21 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

22. Putting our heads together
Edison's – Mastermind
Collaboration
Ideo – Team Empowerment
Agile Thinking – the team as
the resource unit
Photo bySpirit-Fire
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23. Vision
• Steve Jobs – a “computer for the rest of us”
• A music delivery system
• A personal entertainment system
• Keeping you connected and getting paid for it.
• Products that addressed consumer’s needs, feelings,
and motivations.
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24. Apple Marketing Philosophy
• Empathy
• Apple should strive for an “intimate” connection with customer
feelings, “we will truly understand their needs better than any other
company” Mike Markkula , third partner
• Focus
• To be successful Apple should center its efforts on accomplishing its
main goals and eliminate all the “unimportant opportunities”
• Impute
• Apple should be constantly aware that companies and their products
will be judged by the signals they convey. “People DO judge a book
by its cover” Markkula wrote. “We may have the best product, the
highest quality, the most useful software etc; if we present them in a
slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod, if we present
them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired
qualities.
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25. The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs
• Principle 1: Do what you love
• Principle 2: Put a dent in the universe
• Principle 3: Kick-start your brain
• Principle 4: Sell dreams, not products
• Principle 5: Say no to 1,000 things
• Principle 6: Create insanely great experiences
• Principle 7: Master the message
The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Carmine Gallo, McGraw Hill, 2001
25 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

26. 13 Thinking Tools
Sparks of Genius, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein
Observing Empathizing
Imaging Dimensional Thinking
Abstracting Modeling
Recognizing Patterns Playing
Forming Patterns Transforming
Analogizing Synthesizing
Body Thinking
Sparks of Genius, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, Mariner Books, 1991
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27. Observing
• Where do people use your product? Go there and
observe, take notes, ask questions
• Use all your senses
• Check out IDEO – Deep Dive
• Best practices – learn quickly by talking to users
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28. Abstraction
• the act of considering something as a general quality or
characteristic, apart from concrete realities, specific
objects, or actual instances.
• the act of taking away or separating;
• Stripping away everything but the essential
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29. Empathizing
• The ability gain understanding of another person or
object by becoming the thing you wish to understand.
• Learned by
• Observing your own responses to the world
• Observing other people or things
• Imaging what the object is sensing and feeling
• Create detailed user personas, role playing
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31. Exercise 3
• Considering the different creative personalities at your
table create a number of user personas
• One of the personas can be an extreme persona
• An illegal attendee, play hooky from work, witness
protection, from a fringe alternate reality…
A rugby player
31 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

32. Modeling
• A representation of a process, operation or system
• Facilitates the Scientific Method
• Observation, Hypothesis, Experimentation, Conclusion
• Early examples – War room, War Games
Photo used under Creative Commons from Bien Stephenson
Photo used under Creative Commons from tsakshaug
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33. Pattern Recognition
• Leonardo, Edison and others – sought knowledge -
observed patterns in nature and people
• Creative people recognize and use patterns
• Mind Mapping – helps to discern patterns and make
creative connections
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34. Creating Patterns
• Establishing a set of components
• Creating a virtually unlimited number of possible
combinations
• Create a system for creating systems
Photo used under Creative Commons from meddygarnet
Photo used under Creative Commons from Hugo90
34 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

35. Playing
• Breakthrough Discoveries while playing around
• Alexander Fleming Discovers
Penicillin in 1928 while playing
with mold cultures.
Sparks of Genius, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, Mariner Books, 1991
35 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

36. Exercise 4
• Write a set of feature cards for the users around your
table – (user stories or high level feature-placeholders)
• Write a feature card and put it in the center of the table.
• Starting anywhere go around the table and at your turn
add a feature card or take one from the table and “Yes
and “ to it…
36 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

37. Serious Play with Stakeholders
• InnovationGames® – Luke Hohmann, creates games
to engage our innovative intellect and facilitate
collaboration between stakeholders
• Gamestorming – Serious games help to solve complex
problems through collaborative play
37 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

38. The Value of Playing @ Work
• Dr. Stewart Brown – National Institute of Play
• Play – Activity without purpose, freedom from time, lost in
the moment
• Nothing lights up the brain like play. Increases contextual
memory and brain function
• Enhances our problem solving, social interaction,
innovation and creativity
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul
By Stuart L. Brown,
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39. Playing with your team or stakeholders
www.innovationgames.com Use prepared game
scenarios
Create your own
+ + ∆ Interact with your
∆ stakeholders or virtual team
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41. Super Value Creation
• See the Value in every step
• Value Stream Mapping
• SWOT Analysis
• Let the stakeholders buy a feature
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42. Mobile App Monopoly - “Mo app oly”
• Exercise
• Collaborate to create a set of “Chance” cards
• Equal number of positive and negative cards
• Describe a positive impact of using the app and a reward
• Describe a negative impact of using the app and a penalty
• Debrief your stakeholders
• Ask is that possible
• Impact and possible work arounds
Photo by therichbrooks
42 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

43. The Brain Rules-1
1: When you move you exercise the Brain
2. Human Brain is designed to survive – solve problems
while moving in an outdoor environment
3. Every brain is wired differently
4. Multi-tasking is a myth
5. Increase short term memory – Repeat to remember
6.Increase long term memory – Remember to repeat
12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving
at Work, Home, and School By John Medina
43 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

44. The Brain Rules-2
7. Sleep well to think well – and the power of napping
8. Stressed brains do not learn the same was as non
stressed brains
9. Stimulate more of the senses
10. Vision trumps all the other senses
11. Male and female brains are different
12. We are natural and powerful explorers, brain grows
throughout our lives
12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving
at Work, Home, and School By John Medina, 2009
See www.brainrules.net
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45. Strategies for splitting User Stories
1. Steps of a workflow
2. Scenario
3. Sequence in a scenario
4. Operations
5. Size or type of data
6. Type of input, output
or configuration
7. Persona or role
8. Level of knowledge
9. Level of complexity
10. Level of quality expected
45 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

46. Resources
• How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius
Every Day By Michael J. Gelb
• BRAIN RULES 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving
at Work, Home, and School By John Medina
• Innovate Like Edison: The Success System of America’s Greatest
Inventor By Michael J. Gelb and Susan Miller Caldicott
• The Six Thinking Hats by Ed De Bono
• Shine Using Brain Science to Get the Best From Your People by
Edward M. Hallowell
• Innovation Games : Creating Breakthough Products Through
Collaborative Play, Luke Hohmann
• Game Storming A playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and
Changemakers, Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo
46 | Creative Product Owner | A Bennett | © SITA 2012

47. 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses
1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
2. A company is a community, not a machine.
3. Management is service, not control.
4. My employees are my peers, not my children.
5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.
6. Change equals growth, not pain.
7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.
8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.
www.inc.com April 23,2012
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48. Questions
• Allen Bennett
• SITA
• 303 224 3217
• allen.bennett@sita.aero
• albennett@mchsi.com
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