Ultimate anti-tips for product owners

How to become a master product owner in no time!

Finally a product owner! Finally the chance to design a product that really stands out. Finally the opportunity to bring in all those great ideas that have gone unheard so far. Finally no longer just a spectator, but taking the helm. And then?

Then it turns out that reality is a little different. Instead of creative freedom, there are tight sprint cycles. Instead of visionary decisions, there are discussions about backlogs, priorities and technical debt. And then there are the developers, who are so deeply immersed in the details that they underestimate their own capacities and, out of caution, prefer to apply the brakes rather than accelerate with gusto.

Fortunately, there are ways to overcome all these challenges and fulfil your role as a product owner with maximum impact. With the following tips, the product, the team and perhaps even the entire company will change faster than the Scrum Guide can say ‘velocity’. [1]

The interaction with stakeholders

Anyone who has ever developed a product or service knows the importance of stakeholders. Stakeholders are all persons or organisations that are directly or indirectly affected by or have an interest in the activities of a company. It is not surprising that the term appears no fewer than 13 times in the Scrum Guide. And how does the German translation of the Scrum Guide describe the interaction between stakeholders and product owners in a linguistically elegant way?

‘The Product Owner may represent the needs of many stakeholders in the Product Backlog’. [2]

‘May’ take into account the needs of ‘many’ stakeholders? What does ‘may’ mean and what does ‘many’ stakeholders imply? ‘Many’ in the sense of ‘important’? Sorry, but this only confuses. Let’s make it simple: as a product owner, you represent the stakeholders in your company. And, literally, you are the owner of the product. Boom! Chakka! What a role! What an outstanding position.

Of course, it is important to remember again and again who has given you this role, at least indirectly, and how you can express your appreciation: Agree with your stakeholders. [3] If you hear a spontaneous idea, promise to implement it as quickly as possible. Even if implementation is likely to be difficult and competing demands are on the table. [4] Why waste time with discussions when a quick ‘yes’ is so easy?

In some organisations, it is not uncommon for the managing director to have new flash of genius over the weekend. Of course, these flashes take precedence. Ideally, you also save yourself the detour via the people in your organisation who are in contact with customers (salespeople, supporters) to discuss the pros and cons. Firstly, no one without knowledge of the business becomes a managing director, and secondly, the HIPPO principle applies anyway: the opinion of the person with the biggest paycheck always wins. And if there is resistance from the development team, release management, marketing department or, heaven forbid, the development team, simply refer to the Scrum Guide: ‘For Product Owners to succeed, the entire organization must respect their decisions’. Bingo!

Support your team

When was the last time you read an article calling for the reduction or even elimination of hierarchies in organisations? Even the Scrum Guide explicitly states that there are no hierarchies in teams. What sounds good in theory often fails in the harsh reality: hierarchies always exist. [5] And because that is the case, you as a product owner can also take on the obvious leadership role.

• Moderate meetings and support the scrum master.
• Make decisions. Lead the way and not only say what should be done in the next sprint, but also how colleagues should best do it. This way, you will accelerate the coordination process and at the same time easily demonstrate your status as a product expert.
• Trust is good, control is better. Tell each developer that you are aware of their individual performance. This provides security.
• And dispel some Scrum myths: Of course the Sprint Review is about Inspect & Accept and not about Inspect & Adapt. And of course you, as the representative of the stakeholders and the owner of the product, can simply accept the implemented user stories yourself.

In short: Help your team. Lead the way. You’re the boss!

Boosting efficiency made easy

Efficiency is the magic word that keeps cropping up in agile organisations. After all, it’s not for nothing that they say: ‘Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time’. [6] The aim is to deliver as much as possible in the shortest possible time – right? [7] The faster a feature is developed, the more successful the company is! It all sounds so logical! And since technical debt only becomes due when someone wants to collect it, you shouldn’t artificially overestimate it.

Motivate your team to continuously increase their velocity. If a team has achieved 30 story points in the last sprint, they should do better next time. Even better: initiate healthy competition between different teams in your organisation. The winner takes it all – a simple, clear and motivating message. Perhaps you will even reward the most successful team?

A little extra tip: to make this work in practice, you should relieve your team of other tasks: backlog refinement is deliberately not declared as a Scrum Event, so avoid this relatively time-consuming exchange of information with the developers. Prioritise the items to the best of your knowledge and belief; on the one hand, you represent the stakeholders, and on the other, with a little practice, you will become an absolute product insider.

And – but this is only for experienced product owners – last but not least, you can also rethink your product strategy. Why settle for a minimum viable product to get feedback from potential users as early as possible when you can also achieve a maximum viable product by changing your perspective? The vast majority of customers don’t want the minimum, but the maximum of features they can imagine. They don’t want to speculate whether a future product could meet their needs; they want to hold the product in their hands and see it light up at the slightest click of the mouse or tap of a finger. Conquer your market from the outset with the best product you can imagine, a product your customers haven’t even dreamt of yet.

Special tips for advanced product owners

Now that you have seen how to keep your stakeholders happy, how to advance your team with clear leadership, and how to focus on efficiency, here are a few final tips to help you on your way to becoming a master product owner:

Events are generally considered a valuable ingredient in Scrum. But in fact, they are quite a time-consuming affair. You hardly get any work done with all the events. Sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint retrospective and sprint review. Wow. That’s a lot of opportunities to compare notes, discuss goals and tasks, and talk about increments. Why not leave out one or the other event? Remember: the best ideas don’t come in meetings, but in quiet individual work, away from distractions and long-winded comments. What’s more, many developers spend the whole day in a room or communicate with each other online via wonderful platforms. Save yourself a sprint review and simply take the realised backlog items from the last two sprints next time. Yes, at first glance this may sound like an unusual tip, but success proves that the bold are right.

Speaking of courage: in some online articles, experimentation is praised as a valuable learning tool. That sounds good, of course, but the outcome of an experiment is uncertain, the costs are often high and the efficiency low. Besides, everyone knows that the best companies are not those that dare to experiment, but those that rethink existing ideas or cleverly adapt knowledge (see, for example, Apple).

Knowledge is a nice keyword. People also like to philosophise about sharing knowledge. But why should you share it and risk others becoming smarter than you? Those who have knowledge remain irreplaceable and have influence. Keep the strings in your hand. Knowledge transfer is all well and good for idealists, but as a product owner, you should guard your knowledge like a treasure. And: test your importance for your environment from time to time by staying away from one or two meetings and not being available for questions. Make yourself invisible. This also has the advantage that you can teach your team how to organise itself. Win-win. When you win, everyone wins.

It’s great if these tips help you and your team. You’re sure to become a master product owner soon.

Notes:

This was a spoof. Please do not try any of these tips in practice. Companies are liable for their product owners.

[1] The Scrum Guide lacks a whole range of terms used in projects and developments. Velocity is one such term. Here you will find more missing terms in the Scrum Guide.
[2] Here you will find the original Scrum Guide.
[3] Here you will find serious tips for dealing with stakeholders.*
[4] What types of conflicting objectives are there and how can they usually be resolved?
[5] ‘Get rid of the hierarchy and everything will be fine!’ No way! Stephanie Borgert has an interesting suggestion.
[6] For André Claaßen, completing the same work twice in half the time is an agile speed lie.
[7] Jeff Sutherland, the author of ‘Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time’, has published a post in which he claims that with the help of an AI he could now develop software 30 times faster. Experts are right to be very critical of this statement.

There are many real reasons why agility does not work in companies. Heiko Bartlog has written a great series of articles on this topic: Agility? We tried it! Does not work!

And here you can see what a product owner really does and which tips are useful in practice.

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Michael Schenkel has published more posts on the t2informatik Blog, including: