Hey Product Owners! Life Goes Beyond Scrum
When I got my first assignment as a Product Owner, I didn't even know what that was. I ran to educate myself about it quickly.
Back then, I was a Business Analyst and had around six years of experience with software development. I knew how to connect the dots between business and tech. At least, I thought so.
When I first read the Scrum Guide, I saw the Product Owner as a kind of bridge between business and tech. Then, I had my first training. And here's what I learned:
I wish I had never learned that.
For years, that's how I acted as a Product Owner. That's as embarrassing as it can get. The worst thing is that I was not even doing Scrum right. It was just a process we strictly followed.
One of the biggest problems where the question I used to ask myself. Some examples:
What's the problem with these questions? Actually none. All of them could help me improve how I played Scrum, but the problem was limiting myself to that. I was blind to Scrum and couldn't go beyond it. Shame on me.
Life Goes Beyond Scrum
If you limit yourself to Scrum, you're doomed. You've got little chance to stand out.
领英推荐
You have only one chance to create value steadily: Going beyond Scrum.
Do you know how Amazon, Netflix, or Apple work? You can learn that by reading books like Working Backwards, No Rules Rules, That Will Never Work, Build, etc. Curiously, you won't find the word Scrum there or agile. That says something.
Scrum is a means to an end. The goal is to create value, not to do Scrum better.
Here are some aspects Scrum tells you nothing about, but you will for sure fail without them:
The above points are just some examples. We could talk about them for weeks or months. The most important is knowing what will help you in each moment of your product life cycle (another thing Scrum doesn't help you with).
It’s important to mention that Product Owner is a role, not a job. To live up to the Product Owner’s expectation, an experience Product Manager is often the best fit. Which I wasn’t. I had to make my up to become one.
Product Owner Beyond Scrum
I share most of my insights in a written format. I do that because I love helping people avoid traps I've fallen into, but I think that's not enough. I decided to start hosting live training for those who want to excel in their journey.
Last year, I hosted the first live session of Product Owner Beyond Scrum, and given its success, I've decided to open a new group. That takes place on the 18th of March and the 1st of April. Two hands-on sessions. No Bullshit.
If you want to fail as a Product Owner. Stick with Scrum and ignore going beyond it. But if you're longing for growth and to excel in your journey, let me help you with the training Product Owner Beyond Scrum .
No worries, if you attend it and feel bullshited, you'll get a full refund. No hard feelings.
Senior Project Lead and Project Portfolio Manager
9 个月The product owners in reality are the product manangers, with profit- and loss responsibility. Scary how Scrum occupies a well defined term to create some kind of super scrum manager...
Product Director | Product Consultant | Product, Technology and Transformation Leader
1 年Great post David Pereira. I agree that the framework has to some degree limited our focus on the customer and importance of product discovery (guilty of it in the past myself also). In some cases that I have seen then it has led to Product IC's taking on too much 'delivery management' responsibilities and therefore their role becoming misunderstood in the wider business and hence undervalued. Then it becomes harder to shift them towards product discovery as the people around them have got comfortable with them taking on the 'delivery management' responsibilities...
Professional Scrum Mentor. Git guru, Pythonista, Rustacean, NLP. "Build the right thing, and build the thing right." Group Facilitation. Diversity. Queer, white, able-bodied, ADHD, children.
1 年Interesting point. The thing is, that Scrum is not supposed to be an end-all methodology to fix all your project (or product) problems. It provides the framework in which you can get creative, and do whatever is necessary to get the work done. However, you raise important points. It's about delivering what's valuable. Figuring this out _is_ the job of the Product Owner. But how they do it is completely up to them. I hope many POs take your advice to heart and formulate visions - but at the same time, I hope that businesses provide their POs with the necessary respect and trust to do their jobs well. If POs are not trusted with this, they become product "stewards", where they try to please all stakeholders. (https://www.scrum.org/resources/intralinks-case-study-scrum-reboot-time-values)
Product Management | Product Support
1 年Very interesting point of view David Pereira
HandsOn Support for Startups | Boost your Product Management Org & Skills
1 年Yep. Scrum is only a small part of Product Owner skillset. That said... this is the case for Developers and Scrum Masters too.