Professional Product Owner, The

The Professional Product Owner's Guide to Maximizing Value with Scrum

"This book presents a method of communicating our desires, cogently, coherently, and with a minimum of fuss and bother."

-Ken Schwaber, Chairman & Founder, Scrum.org

The role of the Product Owner is more crucial than ever. But it's about much more than mechanics: it's about taking accountability and refocusing on value as the primary objective of all you do. In The Professional Product Owner, two leading experts in successful Scrum product ownership show exactly how to do this. You'll learn how to identify where value can be found, measure it, and maximize it throughout your entire product lifecycle.

Drawing on their combined 40+ years of experience in using agile and Scrum in product management, Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham guide you through all facets of envisioning, emerging, and maturing a product using the Scrum framework. McGreal and Jocham discuss strategy, showing how to connect Vision, Value, and Validation in ROI-focused agile product management. They lay out Scrum best-practices for managing complexity and continuously delivering value, and they define the concrete practices and tools you can use to manage Product Backlogs and release plans, all with the goal of making you a more successful Product Owner. Throughout, the authors share revealing personal experiences that illuminate obstacles to success and show how they can be overcome.

• Define success from the "outside in," using external customer-driven measurements to guide development and maximize value
• Fill the "product management vacuum" by bringing empowerment and entrepreneurship to the Product Owner's role
• Align everyone behind a shared model of how to create, deliver, and capture value
• Use Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt) to invest in the right places, make smarter decisions, and reduce risk
• Effectively apply Scrum's Product Owner role, artifacts, and events
• Populate and manage Product Backlogs, and use just-in-time specifications
• Plan and manage releases, improve transparency, and reduce technical debt
• Scale your product, not your Scrum

• Use Scrum to inject autonomy, mastery, and purpose into your product team's work Whatever your role in product management or agile development, this guide will help you deliver products that offer more value, more rapidly, and more often.

Autorentext

Don McGreal, in his role as VP of Learning Solutions at Improving (improving.com), is a hands-on agile consultant and instructor. He specializes in agile coaching at the enterprise and product management levels within larger organizations. Don is a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer who has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe. He is also co-founder of TastyCupcakes.org, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles. Don is a course steward for the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner course taught around the world.

Ralph Jocham is a German citizen who spent the last 20 years collecting professional software and product development experience in France, the UK, the USA, and now Switzerland. He became an Agile evangelist in 2000 and perfected his approach at ThoughtWorks. Ralph also is Europe's first trainer with Scrum.org and has taught thousands of professionals around the globe. When not busy running his company, Effective Agile (effectiveagile.com), or helping all kinds of enterprises in Europe, he enjoys teaching at universities. Ralph nevertheless finds time to spend quality time with his family on a regular basis, treating them to home-cooked international fine cuisine and going on long walks with the family dog. Ralph is a course steward for the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner course taught around the world.

Inhalt

Foreword xiii

Introduction xv

Acknowledgments xxi

About the Authors xxiii

Part I: Strategy 1

Chapter 1: Agile Product Management 3

Quiz 3

Product Mindset versus Project Mindset 4

What Is Product Management? 7

The Product Management Vacuum and the Three Vs 9

Product Management and Scrum 15

The Product Owner 18

Defining a Product 22

Quiz Review 31

Chapter 2: Vision 33

Quiz 33

Business Modeling 35

Product Vision 40

Technical Strategy 51

Quiz Review 53

Chapter 3: Value 55

Quiz 55

Value Defined 56

Delivering Value 57

Value Metrics 60

Evidence-Based Management 65

Tracking Metrics 83

Where Your Money Goes 85

Negative Value 86

Value Neutrality 89

Quiz Review 92

Chapter 4: Validation 93

Quiz 93

Stakeholder Feedback 95

Marketplace Feedback 97

Pivot or Persevere 104

Quiz Review 108

Part II: Scrum 109

Chapter 5: Empiricism 111

Quiz 111

It's a Complex Problem 111

Certainty Quiz 115

Visualizing Complexity 116

Cynefin 118

Types of Complexity 126

Managing Risk 126

Quiz Review 133

Chapter 6: Scrum 135

Quiz 135

Why a Framework? 136

The Pillars of Scrum 139

Scrum Roles 141

Scrum Artifacts 154

Scrum Events 164

Iterative and Incremental 184

Agile Manifesto for Software Development 186

Quiz Review 188

Part III: Tactics 189

Chapter 7: Product Backlog Management 191

Quiz 191

What Is a Requirement? 192

Product Backlog Ordering 209

"Done" 215

"Ready" Is a Mindset 224

Story Mapping 232

Impact Mapping 236

Success Criteria 239

Specification by Example 241

Quiz Review 248

Chapter 8: Release Management 249

Quiz 249

Reasons to Release 250

Release Strategy 251

Estimation and Velocity 259

Scaling Products 267

Reporting 273

Budgeting 289

Governance and Compliance 294

Kickoff 300

Quality 304

Quiz Review 313

Chapter 9: The Professional Product Owner 315

Understanding Product Owner Success 316

Skills and Traits 318

Measuring Success 321

Index 323