agile bi congres - bi-podium€¦ · management; sector experience in finance, telco and supply...

Agile BI Congres

Product Owner, the impossible job?

Utrecht | December 13th

Axel Suetens

Axel Suetens

Proven track record in Business Intelligence consultancy and Project

Management;

Sector experience in Finance, Telco and Supply Chain Management;

Held several delivery management positions in ICT industry top companies;

Program and project management (setup BI Competence Centers).

Introduction

Introduction

Who is in the

room?

AGENDA

Agile in a nutshell

Agile process

The Product Owner

PO Flavors

The project manager

The right PO

PO the impossible job?

Conclusion

Questions & Answers

Agile in a nutshell

Agile in a nutshell

AGILE MANIFESTO

Iterative

Agile is iterative in nature in that it assumes that we do not know

everything at the beginning of a project, and that we will learn as we

explore and refine our understanding together.

Agile is incremental in nature in that it aims to deliver value to the business

on a regular basis, in small increments. And in doing so it allows us to

reflect on our work, learn from our shared experience, and modify our

priorities to accommodate changes in our environment.

Incremental

Agile teams work in a highly collaborative way with a focus on collective

ownership and collective responsibility. Collaborative

Agile teams understand that by being honest about our current state, past

experiences, and future expectations, we can make better decisions and are

more likely to achieve the desired project outcome.

Transparent

Agile in a nutshell

Guiding principles

Some of my observations

Many companies are starting to implement Scrum in one way or another but

a lot of them seem to forget that Agile is about delivering “VALUE”!

Scrum is considered something for the technical people and project managers

and nothing for the business.

“We don’t need to do <blank>, we’re doing Scrum”.

Agile in a nutshell

Agile in a nutshell

“Working software is the primary

measure of success!”

Project Plans

Test Plans

Requirements Docs

Architectural Diagrams

Analysis Models

Security Reports

Deployment Plans

…

… are of no value to the customer!

Agile process

Agile process

Agile process

WHAT

WHEN

HOW +

DOING

FRAMEWORK

The Product Owner

A Product Owner should own the product on behalf of the company.

You can think of the product owner as the individual who champions the product,

who facilitates the product decisions, and who has the final say about the product,

for instance, if feedback is integrated into the product backlog, or when which

features are released.

“Starting teams often

confuse the two!”

≠

The Product Owner

Manage profitability and ROI

o Baseline target ROI

o Prioritize Product Backlog

o Measure business value

Call for releases

Guides product development

Product Owner

The Product Owner

The Proxy PO

Technical debt

Innovation

Infrastructure

Architecture

Sales

Customer

support

Marketing

Competition

Proxy

PO

Architectural

Feature A

Technical debt

Feature B

Product

Backlog

Tech

no

log

y Bu

sine

ss

• Balance needs

• Bring goals, not solutions

• Not a manager

• The big picture / strategy

• Good quality product backlog

• Acceptance

• Schedule Feature C

Th

e P

rod

uct

Th

e C

usto

me

r

PO Flavors

PO flavors

Product Owner flavors I have come across:

Release

Manager

Information

analystUnit Manager

Product

ManagerProject Manager

The project manager

Where did the PM role go?

Group discussion

The right PO

The right PO

The big word here is Business Case. The business case describes the benefits of the

deliverables of the project. Perhaps we should call him ‘Business Case Owner’?.

The reverse is also true, if your Product Owner isn’t accountable for realizing the Business

Case, he is not your real Product Owner. But if you can transfer accountability to the product

owner, what kind of competences does the Product Owner need to posses to perform

Business Case driven steering?

Business Case Value

Financial

Some domain knowledge

Time (availability)

PO the impossible job?

PO the impossible job?

IT and the business have different levels of interest for transitioning to Scrum.

Technology is more interested in Scrum than the business. Eliminating all other certification combinations¹, there are:

121,100 Certified ScrumMasters

14,162 Certified Product Owners

There is about one PO class for every five SM classes

Gap between the business (typically driven by financials ) and IT with Scrum involvement. The business often doesn’t understand how Scrum (when done right) can deliver value.

1 Data provided by Scrum Alliance May 2011

PO the impossible job?

Reality check: a fundamental problem with the Scrum Product Owner role outside of

product development companies: good Product Owners are too rare.

Scrum selling argument that it is a lightweight process. It provides a helpful structure, mind

set and best practices for a single development team. However, it does not for instance help

you on how to create user stories, manage architecture and scale over multiple teams.

In a larger organization, we need user stories, architecture and multiple teams. So, rather

than switching to a heavyweight process that covers all of these, we need to extend Scrum

with additional processes and best practices for the challenges at hand.

Story

MappingStory refinement

PO craftsmanship: Story mapping

Start with understanding the process

flow and the needs.

Create Epics and Stories and map these

to the process flow.

Break sprintable Stories into Tasks.

Level 1 – Minimum viable product

Level 2 – Next release

Level 3 – Next release

Level .. – Next release

Without this no value is created what so ever!

Day 1: …

Day 2: …

Day 3: …

PO craftsmanship: Story mapping

Start with understanding the process

flow and the needs.

Create Epics and Stories and map these

to the process flow.

Break sprintable Stories into Tasks.

Level 1 – Minimum viable product

Level 2 – Next release

Level 3 – Next release

Level .. – Next release

Without this no value is created what so ever!

Day 1: …

Day 2: …

Day 3: …

RISK VALUE

Story CStory CStory CStory C

DEMAND

CREATION

PRODUCT

CREATION

PLAN

MERCHANDISE SELL DELIVER INVOICE

Story BStory BStory BStory B

Story AStory AStory AStory A Story DStory DStory DStory DEEEE

Story FStory FStory FStory F Story JStory JStory JStory J Story L Story L Story L Story L Story M Story M Story M Story M

GGGGHHHH

IIII

KKKK

Task 1Task 1Task 1Task 1

Task ..Task ..Task ..Task ..

Task ..Task ..Task ..Task ..

Process Flow

Product Backlog

PO craftsmanship: Story mapping

Sprint

Agile BI

From Standard plug & play

reports to Self Service

Common Agile Scrum pitfalls

No support from business leadership

PO's are not available enough for strategy and planning meetings

PO's are too busy for training and education (uninformed)

PO's have multiple hats on

PO's are not the right person

PO's are not empowered

Lack of trust between PO and the Team

Backlogs are not ready

No prioritization mechanism

Delivery capacity and allocation is not known

…. the last 3 bullet points imply the need for a Framework.

Demand Management framework

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Conclusion

I have explained when the Product Owner role didn’t work as it should have and also what

a good Product Owner should be concerned with to maximize the project effectiveness by

focusing on the business value of it’s features.

I conclude that the role is hard to fill in the right way which makes Scrum hard to kick-start

and makes the process feel either broken or too heavy.

Food for thought

Perhaps we need a special “non-product-development” version of Scrum? Or redefine the

Product Owner role to fit large organizations so that we can start the process immediately

and then gradually move towards the ultimate vision of true collaboration between the

business and development.

Conclusion

Questions & Answers

Axel Suetens

axel.suetens@cadenz.be

+32 473 584 150

www.cadenz.be

Contact information