Download - What Made Paul A Great Product Owner

A Presentation on Product Owner personas

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Chris does not control his backlog.

Multiple customers input needed for backlog

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0 Great at Herding Customers

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He knew the business well

When in Ask

7/18/2010All rights reserved Vibhu Srinivasan

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How much time did he spend with the team

40 % 7/18/2010

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Wait aren’t Product owners needed to spend all their time

with their teams

Says- FOCUS ON YOUR CUSTOMER NOT THE TEAMS

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POT ? Meets twice a week

Product owner Team Meeting

Customer Ideas

Roadmap

Release Plan

Product

Product Backlog

Vision

Velocity

Inputs:

Participants:

User Story Workshops, Cust Interviews

One Backlog

Outputs:

Product Backlog

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SolutionsIQ. All Rights Reserved.

Says

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“My top most priority is the

backlog readiness”

He is quick to decide once data is available. Takes Calculated

Risks

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Team first, Customer First Attitude

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But the most important trait of all…..


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For him..

0Scrum was just a tool So he wouldn't lose sleep for a deviation he took

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No Lost in Translation

Encouraged Team To Sign Up For Really Complex Stories

0 Teams were allowed to talk to any customer Directly within a sprint

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Its not done until everything is done

ESP. TESTABLE CODE

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Says

Final Thoughts

0 Chris’s teams produce complex software, ship it and deploy it to multiple deployment centers across the world pretty touch free and with Zero Major Defects – EVERY TWO MONTHS

0 Customers in this case are extremely satisfied with Chris and his products.


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A bit about Happy Jen

0 Very approachable product manager

0 The company grew too quickly so Jen went from one product one team to many products many many teams quickly.

0 No knowledge of Scrum, but dealt with teams that were highly scrum aware.


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Once upon a time …


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0 One Visionary , Big B, Many followers

0 Developers developed whatever Big B wanted

0 They shipped whenever

Then came Jen

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0 Took over the product from the visionary.

0 Built some basic process like initial documentation of requirements

But

The teams continued to see Jen as a proxy product owner as

Big B The visionary continued to directly interact with

teams

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Soon productgrew

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1

1

BACKLOG

BIG BACKLOG

Product became a portfolio

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0 1 3 42

Jen Pondered !!One or Many Backlogs?

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ONE BIG

BACKLOG

BACKLOG 1

BACKLOG 2

BACKLOG 3

BACKLOG 4

OR

They Chose

0Many Backlogs


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Which then led to the question ??

0 ONE TEAM PER BACKLOG OR MANY TEAMS PER BACKLOG

0 AND ONE PRODUCT OWNER PER BACKLOG OR JUST JEN

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One Product owner –Many teams

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All rights reserved Vibhu Srinivasan28

BACKLOG 1

BACKLOG 2

BACKLOG 3

BACKLOG 4

Worked on

Soon

0 Happy Jen was not so happy at all

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Unhappy Because

0 She lost touch of the products as she was more busy running to the meetings than to think about her products

0 She could never establish herself as a great product owner.

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Unhappy Because

0 Every now and then priorities would change and Jen would have to go though all the backlogs all over again

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End Result

0 The work don’t by all teams came to a standstill and a new process had to be found.

0 That led Happy Jen to a new way of thinking


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Take 2 Minutes

0 Take two minutes – talk to you neighbor and discuss what Jen could have done differently


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A little bit about Paul

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0 Paul was the product owner of a financial products company

0 He knew this business damn well

0 The system he set out to built had huge financially ramifications if he messed it up

How much time did he spend with the team

1000 % 7/18/2010 36

How much time did he spend with the customer

1000 % 7/18/2010 37

Paul did not know Scrum or XP.

His teams did

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Complex financial algorithms would be written in a two week

sprint


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Guess who was often the pairing Partner

You are right

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Paul would do just in time design

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He would sit and prototype with the team

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The team could constantly question him on any feature

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There would not be a standup without Paul

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After 30 plus Sprints, the team went from a Scrum mode to

Kanban like approach

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Paul was a master of dropping features not necessary

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With Paul, the team felt the joy of doing work together and

everyone in the team was appreciated

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0 The system after many years is still in use and in great shape.

0 Paul meanwhile has gone to do other things, I am sure he has carried a few Agilish ideas with him

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To Conclude

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Your product is only as good as your product owner, choose them wisely.

0 Understand your product owner and learn to work with them closely

Thanks for listening

0 All characters in this presentation are fictional, any relation to real humans is simply coincidental

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