What the heck is a Product Owner? Why do you need one? And how can the Product Owner help a team soar – or crash horribly? In this talk Anthony Marter will share his experience developing the Product Owner role in 2 large NZ software organisations. He’ll cover · The basics of the role, and how an effective Product Owner contributes to the success of a team · The challenges of the role, especially at scale · Why an effective Product Owner is key to establishing and maintaining organisational Agility

1. Agile Roles #3 The Product Owner
14 Sept 2016

2. Thanks to our sponsors
Assurity Consulting
ASB Bank
HALO Consulting

3. This event
• Restrooms
• Fire exits
• Sli.do #Agile
• Introduction

4. The Product Owner
What is this Mythical Beast?
Anthony Marter
@antzzzm

5. Where am I coming from?
• Product Ownership at scale
–Fiserv: 1 team -> 6+ teams
–Orion: Cross organisation release train
• Building products
• Large, monolithic products*
• Multiple teams working on a single release

6. In the beginning…
The Basics

7. What do I do?
• Create Backlog
• Prioritise Backlog
• Work with team to deliver backlog
• Go have coffee?

8. Why do I care about being agile?
“My vision for our organisation is
that we will regularly ship product
(software) that meets the needs of
our users”

9. Let’s break it down…
• “…regularly ship product…”
–We live in an uncertain world of unpredictable interactions
–There’s always a new client
• “…meets the needs of our users…”
–Solves their business problem (not features)
–Meets only their needs, not imagined needs
Always be delivering VALUE

10. What is VALUE?

11. But what do I actually do?
WHY
WHAT
HOW
ProductOwner
DeliveryTeam

12. Team Success
Build this feature!
Solve this problem!
Requirements Up front design
No change allowed Doesn’t work how we expected it to
Churn
Business Problem Team finds solution
Innovation
Empowerment
Validation
Did it work?

13. Successful Team?
“The team can understand the
business problem, self-organise
around solving it, and recognise
when it is solved”

14. Sounds easy right?
The Challenges

15. Are we solving a business problem?
• We’ve come from a world of features
• We need to solve… OMG SHINY TECH THINGS
• Business problems tend to change less over time
”Let’s lift this up a level”

16. Which business problem do we solve?
Value
Architecture
Market/
Features
Quality
Tech Debt
Team
Happiness
Support
Delivery
Engineering
Innovation
UX
Security/
Compliance
...

17. What do we value?
• Varies with time, environment
• Can’t be consistently quantified
• Can be agreed on?
Quality
Timeliness
Team
Happiness
Technical
Debt
Reduction

18. Build, Elaborate and Prioritise the Backlog

19. Communicating Vision
• Between the Business and the Delivery Team(s)
• Specification by Example
• Workshops
• Never Assume WHAT
I
KNOW
WHAT
YOU
KNOW
WHAT
WE
KNOW

20. Decision Making
• I am a human (dragon?), not a rulebook
VELOCITYBLAME
SCAPEGOAT

21. Done Done Done!

22. How big is the role?
1:2

23. Scaling
Chief Product Owner (Spotify)
Software Product Manager (Fiserv)
Solution Product Owner (Orion Health)
Capability PO
Team PO
Component PO
Capability PO
Team PO
Component PO
Capability PO
Team PO
Component PO
Capability PO
Team PO
Component PO

24. Do you need a mythical beast?
• Product Manager – deep into market
–NZ context – not always co-located
• Business Analyst – part of the team finding solutions
• YMMV – how big are the roles in your organisation?
Product Manager
(Subject Matter Expert)
Business Analyst
(part of team)
Product
Owner
Product
Owner
Business Analyst
(part of team)
Roadmap
Scrum
Events
Product Manager
(Subject Matter Expert)

25. The Business Analyst (YMMV)?
Overall Product (or Capability) Scope
SpecificBusinessProblem
Product Owner
BusinessAnalyst
SpecificBusinessProblem
SpecificBusinessProblem
Product Owner:
• Broad but shallow
Business Analyst:
• Narrow but deep
Blurred Lines:
• Product Analyst role

26. Too many hats?
• Product Owner = Random business guy 
• Product Owner = Scrum Master 
• Product Owner = Team Lead (or other tech person) 
• Product Owner = Business Analyst 
• Product Owner = Product Owner 

27. Bringing it back together
Enabling Organisational Agility

28. Organisational Agility
“Our business can survive and thrive
in an ever changing environment”

29. The Effective PO – Measure 1
”We solve the business problems of
our users, we don’t just deliver them
features (and we validate)”

30. The Effective PO – Measure 2
“We ship regularly, meaning we can
rapidly adapt to change”

31. The Effective PO – Measure 3
“We utilise the full capability of the
smart people in our teams”

32. And that’s all folks!
Are your Product Owners effective?
meetup.com/Product-Management-Auckland/

33. Questions?
Sli.do #Agile

34. Coming events
Next Event :
Unconference format – Agile Roles
Date: 28th of September
Time: 5:45 PM
Venue: AUT WG901/2/3

35. Let’s stay in touch!
@AgileAuckland
meetup.com/Agile-Auckland/
Group: Agile Auckland
info@agileprofessionals.net

36. Thanks to our sponsors
Assurity Consulting
ASB Bank
HALO Consulting

37. Special Thanks
• Event organised by volunteers
• Jim from SERL for venue and catering
Software Engineering
Research Laboratory

38. Coming events
Next Event :
Unconference format – Agile Roles
Date: 28th of September
Time: 5:45 PM
Venue: AUT WG901/2/3