Product Owner Safari

I was privileged to conduct a workshop yesterday at the Agile and Beyond Conference in Dearborn, Michigan, on how to be an enterprise Product Owner. The deck is available here.

Thanks to all who attended!

Comments

A Corporate Agile 10-point Checklist

I'm pretty sure my few remaining friends in the "small, collocated team agile" community are going to desert me after this, but I actually have a checklist of 10 things to think about if you're a product owner at a big company thinking of trying out some agile today. Some of these might even apply to you if you're in a smaller place. So at the risk of inciting an anti-checklist riot (I'm sorry, Pez!), I am putting this out there in case it is helpful to someone else. From http://www.yogawithjohn.com/tag/yoga-class/ Here's what you should think about: 1. Your staffing pattern. A full agile project requires that you have the full team engaged for the whole duration of the project at the right ratios. So as you provision the project, check to see whether you can arrange this staffing pattern. If not, you will encounter risks because of missing people. Concretely it means that: a. ...

Requirements Traceability in Agile Software Development

One of the grim proving grounds for the would-be agile business analyst (henceforth "WBABA") is the "traceability conversation." Eventually, you will have to have one. You may have seen one already. If you haven't, you may want to half-avert your eyes as you read further. It gets a little brutal. But if you close them all the way, you can't read. From: http://www.highestfive.com/mind/how-to-perform-a-successful-interrogation/ Dialogue: WBABA : ...so in summary, we complete analysis on each story card, and then we support the developers as they build it that same iteration! Corporate Standards Guy: but how do you do traceability in agile? You have to have traceability. It's broadly recognized as an important factor in building rigorous software systems. These software systems permeate our society and we must entrust them with lives of everyday people on a daily basis. [The last two sentences are an actu...

Your Agile Transformation Needs to Start with a Quiet Phase

From a really great blog post on agile adoption: http://smoovejazz.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/an-agile-approach-for-adopting-agile-practices/ I've observed some different agile transformation patterns, and maybe you have too: Just Do Standups (Shoot, then Aim): some people feel that since you're "agile," you should just start doing stuff, like daily standups, and then build more of the the plan as you go. Find a team and start doing some agile with them! Start a revolution one practice at a time, one team at a time. Pros: you're very busy from the start. Cons: what exactly are you doing and why? KPI-Driven Change (Aim, then Shoot) : some people who have worked in large corporations for a while will tell you that to get the respect of the people, you need to start with a plan, support the plan with awesome printed and online collateral. Then you "kick off," tell teams what to do, and measure them using "Key Productivity Indi...

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