The Professional Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage, First Edition

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 maximise 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 maximise 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, artefacts, 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 Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents About This E-Book Foreword Introduction Acknowledgments About the Authors PART I Strategy Chapter 1 Agile Product Management Quiz Product Mindset versus Project Mindset What Is Product Management? The Product Management Vacuum and the Three Vs Vision Value Validation Product Management and Scrum The Product Owner Defining a Product Quiz Review Chapter 2 Vision Quiz Business Modeling Business Model Canvas Product Vision Focused Practical versus Emotional Pervasive Visioning with Scrum Technical Strategy Quiz Review Chapter 3 Value Quiz Value Defined Delivering Value Value Metrics Evidence-Based Management Current Value Time to Market Ability to Innovate Tracking Metrics Where Your Money Goes Negative Value Visible Invisible Value Neutrality Perversion of Metrics Quiz Review Chapter 4 Validation Quiz Stakeholder Feedback Marketplace Feedback Minimum Viable Product Minimum Viable Product through Kano MVP Patterns Promotional MVP Mining MVP Landing Page MVP Wizard of Oz MVP Single-Feature MVP Pivot or Persevere Quiz Review PART II Scrum Chapter 5 Empiricism Quiz It’s a Complex Problem Certainty Quiz Visualizing Complexity Cynefin Obvious Complicated Complex Chaos Putting It All Together Types of Complexity Managing Risk Quiz Review Chapter 6 Scrum Quiz Why a Framework? The Pillars of Scrum Transparency Inspection Adaptation Scrum Roles Product Owner Development Team Scrum Master Others Scrum Artifacts Product Backlog Sprint Backlog Increment Others Scrum Events Sprint Sprint Planning Daily Scrum Sprint Review Sprint Retrospective Other Iterative and Incremental Agile Manifesto for Software Development Quiz Review PART III Tactics Chapter 7 Product Backlog Management Quiz What Is a Requirement? Product Backlog User Stories Nonfunctional Requirements Epics Acceptance Criteria Spikes Product Backlog Ordering Measuring Value, Risk, and Size “Done” Definition of “Done” Example Definition of “Done” “Ready” Is a Mindset Getting to Ready Lean Requirements Management Story Mapping Steps to Creating a Story Map Explore the Story Map Story Maps and Product Backlogs The Past and the Future Impact Mapping Success Criteria Specification by Example Quiz Review Chapter 8 Release Management Quiz Reasons to Release Release Strategy Major Releases Minor Releases Functional Releases Estimation and Velocity Managing Multiple Teams Scaling Products One Product, One Development Team Several Products, One Development Team Several Products, Several Development Teams One Product, Several Development Teams The Nexus Framework Reporting Forecasting Basics Forecasting Across Multiple Products Percentage of Completion Monte Carlo Simulation Which Color Is Your Velocity? Budgeting Governance and Compliance Kickoff Quality Definitions Types of Quality Keeping Quality Quiz Review Chapter 9 The Professional Product Owner Understanding Product Owner Success The Receiving Product Owner The Initiating Product Owner You Skills and Traits Measuring Success Index Credits 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. 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 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. 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. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details. Product ownership is an utterly crucial role in most businesses. Scrum recognizes this -- but unfortunately, many companies, agile resources, and training curricula focus primarily on the mechanics of product ownership. Mechanics are important, but only as a means to an end: value. The Professional Product Owner will help product owners and their organizations refocus on value as the primary objective. The authors offer detailed practices for identifying where value can be found, measuring it, and maximizing it throughout the entire product lifecycle. Drawing on their combined 40+ years of experience in using agile and Scrum in product delivery, the authors show how to go beyond merely writing requirements and managing product backlogs, to take accountability and drive the process from vision to value.