Product Ownership

Using the PMF Survey to gauge Company Fit For Purpose

How would you feel if you could no longer work the way we work here? Sean Ellis, the OG Growth Hacker, came up with the PMF survey question, which has become one of (if not the) established ways to gauge Product Market Fit: If more than 40% of your existing customers answer “Very Disappointed,” you …

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It’s all in the Name

Shifting from projects/solutions to a product/outcomes mindset is hard. And the Names we use for our Epics / Features / Stories make it even harder. Too often than not, those names are a relic of the original ask, which is typically of the “build it and they will come” nature. Even as we work on …

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“Transformed”. Yet still the same. An All To Familiar Agile Story

Picture BuzzCorp (Many of you won’t have to use too much imagination). They’ve invested significant efforts in developing software and products in an agile manner. They formed agile teams (but a deeper look shows those are the existing component/functional teams using agile methods) They manage Features/Stories in JIRA/ADO (but those are the functional slices that …

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Combining SAFe PO and PM responsibilities with Professional Scrum PO Stances

Exploring the controversy around SAFe’s approach to Product Ownership

Exploring SAFe’s Approach to Product Ownership What is SAFe’s perspective on the Product Owner role? How does it differ from the Scrum Guide? Why is Product Ownership split between the Product Owner and Product Manager in SAFe? SAFe’s approach to Product Ownership draws quite a bit of criticism. As a Professional Scrum Trainer who’s also …

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Advanced Scrum Product Ownership — Riding Dinosaurs

What does Scrum Product Ownership have to do with Dinosaurs? We typically say that Scrum Masters get to herd cats. But Scrum Product Owners actually need to learn how to ride a Dinosaur! With the click-bate established, what does that even mean? I’ve been using a visualization that people find useful for understanding the relationship …

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Explaining MVPs, MVFs, MMFs via the Lean/Agile Requirements Dinosaur

In the last few weeks I’ve been using a new visualization that people find useful for understanding the relationship between the various Lean/Agile requirement containers. Some people call the full model a dinosaur. Others are reminded of the snake who ate an elephant from “The Little Prince”. (I’m sure there is a good connection to …

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Explaining MVPs, MVFs, MMFs via the Lean/Agile Requirements Dinosaur

I’ve been using a visualization that people find useful for understanding the relationship between the various Lean/Agile requirement containers. Some people call the full model a dinosaur. Others are reminded of the snake who ate an elephant from “The Little Prince”. (I’m sure there is a good connection to elephant carpaccio somewhere in here …) The …

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Kanban Networks Exercise

One of the approaches I’ve been using lately with clients is starting with whole system Kanban, focusing on Discovery and Delivery, and then potentially zoom into Team Agile in some/all streams as the organization understands the concepts of Flow, Stop Starting Start Finishing, Inspect and Adapt etc. It IS typically necessary to go to smaller …

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Explore Product Owner / Team responsibilities Exercise

I wanted to share an exercise I created in a workshop last week One of the topics we wanted to explore was the responsibilities/activities of Product Owners and the Agile Team and how do they relate. The objective of the exercise was to understand the various activities and how they map in the continuum between …

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What do I need to know to start being a Product Owner?

  What is the basic role of the Product Owner? http://blog.crisp.se/2012/10/25/henrikkniberg/agile-product-ownership-in-a-nutshell (New) http://scalingsoftwareagility.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ch-11-role-of-the-product-owner-rev-12.pdf http://www.agileproductdesign.com/downloads/patton_product_owner_role.ppt Starting with user stories: User stories are the most common way to handle requirements in the agile world. One of the first things you’ll need to do as a product owner is familiarize yourself with them, and start to provide them to …

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