{"id":1102,"date":"2011-07-11T17:19:54","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T17:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.agilityfeat.com\/?p=110"},"modified":"2011-07-11T17:19:54","modified_gmt":"2011-07-11T17:19:54","slug":"alndc-meeting-on-the-essential-product-owner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2011\/07\/alndc-meeting-on-the-essential-product-owner\/","title":{"rendered":"#ALNDC meeting on \u00abThe Essential Product Owner\u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do Lean principles complement and reinforce the roles in a Scrum project?\u00a0 That was one question on my mind as I drove up to the Agile Leadership Network DC<\/a> meeting, held in Tysons Corner.\u00a0 People sometimes discuss Scrum, XP, Kanban, and Lean as competing agile methodologies instead of focusing on all the common values and principles they espouse.\u00a0 So I was looking forward to Jim York’s presentation on \u00abThe Essential Product Owner: A Lean Distillation.\u00bb\u00a0 Jim is a partner in FoxHedge Ltd, an agile coaching and training practice in Leesburg, and one of his specialties is training and coaching product owners.<\/p>\n

Jim started with a definition of the Product Owner role in Scrum, paraphrased from The Scrum Primer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The product owner is the person responsible for managing the product backlog so as to maximize the value.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One point that Jim emphasized which I really appreciated is that stories on the product backlog are \u00abcandidates for development\u00bb, and are not a commitment by the team.\u00a0 The items added to a sprint backlog by the team are a commitment that the team is making to the product owner.\u00a0 However, putting a story on the product backlog (which covers all stories that the product owner and the team want to do eventually), is not a commitment.\u00a0 This is an area of common misunderstanding with customers.\u00a0 Especially in any project where the timeline or budget for delivery is fixed, it’s crucial that the customer understand that just because you are putting an item on the backlog does not mean it will be done.<\/p>\n

One of the most valuable points that I got out of the talk was his \u00abYork’s 80\/5 Guideline for Product Owner Engagement\u00bb.\u00a0 Jim described this guideline as:<\/p>\n

The Product Owner should be able to get the team’s questions answered 80% of the time within 5 minutes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I really like that guideline, because as Jim discussed, it can help you determine if someone is the right person to be product owner.\u00a0 Your potential product owner may be the biggest expert in the company on the product, and therefore very attractive as a product owner.\u00a0 But if they can’t participate in team meetings, then they won’t be able to answer your questions within 5 minutes.\u00a0 On the other extreme, someone may be able to attend all your meetings and they may know all the right people to forward your question on to, but if they can’t answer enough of the questions themselves then they probably won’t be able to get 80% of the questions answered in 5 minutes.\u00a0 Ideally, you want someone in between those extremes, and Jim’s guideline helps keep that in mind.<\/p>\n

Jim spent most of the discussion focusing on the basic principles of lean, and relating those 7 principles to the role of the product owner:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Eliminate Waste<\/li>\n
  2. Build Quality In<\/li>\n
  3. Create Knowledge<\/li>\n
  4. Defer Commitment<\/li>\n
  5. Deliver Fast<\/li>\n
  6. Respect People<\/li>\n
  7. Optimize the Whole<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You can read more about the principles of lean here<\/a>, but note that the principles are worded slightly different than my notes.<\/p>\n

    For lack of time and the brevity of my notes, I can’t recount all that Jim described in his discussion, but I can assure there were many great points made.\u00a0 Here is a random collection of some of the other tidbits I gleaned from his session:<\/p>\n