Are your Lean Agile software development customers and Scrum Product Owners too busy to work with your team? Here are 3 ideas you can use to help customers and Scrum Product Owners improve how they manage their time and visualize their work. Give your Product Owners tools to make working with their teams easier and more effective.

1. Can you fix my customers?!
Robin Dymond CST

2. Who am I?
 Robin Dymond, CST
 Managing Partner Innovel LLC
 21 years in software development
 9 yrs doing Scrum + XP, 5 yrs applying Lean
 Agile Program Coach in the largest Agile
transition in Banking
 Trained 800+ people in Scrum in Ukraine
 Clients in US, Europe, Canada, Brazil
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

3. Is this your customer…?
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

4. Is this your customer…?
… hello….?
….hello….?
“The number requested is busy, please try your
call again.”
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

5. What can you do about
this?
 Help them visualize their work
 Give them techniques to manage their work
 Help them implement these tools
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

6. Visualize their work
Write Product Meet with
Whitepaper Photoshoot stakeholders
Customer 2012 Marketing Trade show
meeting planning planning
Meet with
Update Product Regulatory
other Product
Road map update
managers
Review
Prepare for Review test
completed User
next iteration plan with QA
stories
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

7. Reduce work in process
Product Owner Personal Kanban
Work CUE Next WIP 2 Done
Customer
Blabla Customer More stuff
stuff
stuff
Blabla PBL work
Blabla Sales stuff Fun work
Sales stuff
stuff Boring work
More stuff Blabla
work
Fun work
Boring work
Blabla
Other work
Bbsit sales
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net
Focus group

8. Visualize Backlog Prep
Kanban for Backlog Preparation
Product Ready for Ready for
Backlog Next Epics 2 User Stories team review 5 sprint planning
Blabla Epic 3 Story 2.1 Story 1.3 Story 1.1
Epic 1
Blabla Epic 4 Story 2.2
Story 1.4 Story 1.2
Blabla Epic 5 Epic 2
stuff Story 2.3
Story 2.4
More stuff Story 2.5
work
Fun work
Boring work
Limited Work In Progress
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

9. Set regular stakeholder and
team PBL review meetings
Product Backlog
Product
Backlog
StakeholderBacklog TeamBacklog NO SURPRISES
Reviewmeeting Reviewmeeting
Sprint planning
or Sprint review
Sprint 1
Backlog
Sprint1 Sprint 2
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Repeat
SprintPlan Daily Sprint Review,
ning Standup Retrospective
meeting
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

10. Reduce the PO Work in
Progress (WIP)
 How much stuff is the P.O. working on?
 What other projects do they have?
 What does sales and marketing demand for
road maps and future plans?
 How do they interact with stakeholders?
 Are there regular facilitated stakeholder
meetings to work on the backlog?
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

11. Your Product Owner needs
a process too
 Scrum is silent on how product owners should
manage their work
 Product Owners feed the rest of the
development system and are a constraint
 Find ways to build and support effective work
processes for your POs.
 Define what “Ready for development” means
for user stories
 Use Lean and just in time ideas to eliminate
overworked POs
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

12. Questions?
©2011 Innovel LLC. All rights reserved www.innovel.net

13. Innovel LLC
Training and Consulting in
Scrum XP Agile Lean Kanban
Robin Dymond, CST
rdymond@innovel.net
www.innovel.net
www.scrumtraining.com
Americas: (804) 239-4329
Europe: +32 489 674 366