product ownership Archives - Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant

May 10, 2019May 10, 2019

Product Roles, Part 8: Summary: Collaborate at All Levels for the Product

Too many teams have overloaded Product Owners. The teams and PO have trouble connecting the organization’s strategy to what the teams deliver. The teams, PO, management, all think they need big planning. Too often, the POs don’t do small-enough replanning. They’re not living the principles of the agile manifesto. That insufficient collaboration means the PO …

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May 8, 2019May 10, 2019

Product Roles, Part 7: Collaboration Can Shorten Feedback Loops

I started this series with the question: If we have teams for all other aspects of an agile approach, why wouldn’t we want the product owner to also work as part of a team? Could a team reduce the feedback loop durations? In Phase Gate or Other Serial Approaches… When projects use a phase gate …

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May 6, 2019

Eliminate Fake Certainty and Solve the Real Problem

Summary: Too often, customers have a “fake certainty” about the problems they want to solve. They might not have defined the real problem, but they have frequently defined the solution anyway. The risk is that we might build the wrong thing. When the product owner works with the customers to define the problem, then works …

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April 26, 2019May 10, 2019

Product Roles, Part 5: Component Teams to Create Slices

As I’ve written these product role posts, a number of you have asked about how to use component teams. You might have a security team. Maybe a performance team. Regardless of my desire, you have component teams. You want a more agile approach to manage the interdependencies among the teams. You want to be able …

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April 11, 2019May 10, 2019

Product Roles, Part 3: Product or Feature Teams vs Project Teams

An agile approach requires a cross-functional team. That means that everyone on the team focuses on the same intent. That intent might be an entire product. It might be a feature set as part of a larger program. But, the team focuses as a team. That cross-functional team is a product team or a feature …

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March 28, 2019

Agile Milestone Criteria for Projects and Programs

You’ve got interdependencies across the organization for a given project or program to release a product. You can see demos. That’s not the problem. You need enough insight or prediction to start the marketing campaign or to create training videos or product documentation. You need some kind of milestone criteria so you know you can complete …

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October 29, 2018

Fake Certainty Article Posted on AgileConnection

Many product owners and customers believe they know the problem they want to solve. That fake certainty causes them to define solutions, instead of solving the problem at hand. John Le Drew and I pair-wrote an article describing this problem and how to solve it. See Eliminate Fake Certainty and Solve the Real Problem. Yes, I’ve …

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September 22, 2018October 12, 2018

Product Orientation Requires Technical Excellence

One of the big problems I see with a product orientation (as opposed to a project) is in preparing for ongoing work. You might not start the next project for this product after you complete this project. You might have to round-robin projects for various products because you don’t have enough people to do all …

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July 25, 2018

Shorter Feedback Loops Help Us Learn Faster

I’m working on my roadmapping talk for Agile 2018. I finally had the transforming idea about how to position the talk: Roadmapping and product planning are about feedback loops. The shorter the feedback loop, the faster and more often we can learn. That feedback loop works in at least these ways: The faster we learn, …

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June 5, 2018

Frequent Releasing Can Lead to Short and Frequent Planning

Agile approaches can help a team release more often. When a team releases more often, the product people can replan the product roadmaps. The project portfolio people can replan the project portfolio. Not every team releases often enough to take advantage of replanning small and often. Everyone falls prey to “too much” thinking. The product …

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