The Product Backlog Refinement Steps
Refining the product backlog helps you make the right product decisions and get the product backlog ready for the next sprint. In this post, I show how you successfully refine your product backlog in five steps.
Tag Archives: product owner
Focus on the User, not the Product!
Getting lost in the product details and struggling to decide if a feature should be implemented is a common challenge for product owners. This post helps you focus on what really counts: creating value for the people using the product and the organisation developing it.
The Highlander Principle
If you grew up as a teenager in the 1980s like me, you are probably familiar with the quote “There can only be one” from the first Highlander movie. Interestingly, this statement is also true for product owners: There should only be one product owner per product. But don’t worry: You don’t have to become an immortal warrior to understand the Highlander principle. Reading this blog post will do the trick.
The Scrum Startup
The blog posts explains how to setting up a Scrum team as an incubator in an established enterprise helps create a new product, and to pilot an agile way of working.
Two Common Ways to Apply the Product Owner Role
Applying the product owner role can be challenging, as no two products are the same. While products and projects vary, I have found two common ways to employ the role: Asking the customer or a customer proxy such as a product manager to take on the product owner role. This post discusses when which option is more appropriate.
The Release Planning Workshop
Determining the release date and budget before development starts can be tricky particularly for new or young products where the product backlog contents are not known upfront. This blog post discusses the use of a measurable release goal and collaborative workshop to determine the launch date and the budget before the first sprint starts.
User Story Modelling
User stories are great at capturing product functionality in isolation. But they are not well suited to describe the relationship between different features and capture user journeys and workflows. This blog posts shows how context and activity diagrams can be successfully used to model interactions in user story context.
The Product Vision Board
The vision plays an important role in bringing a new product to life: It acts as the overarching goal guiding everyone involved in the development effort. Equally important is the product strategy, the path chosen to attain the vision. Without a shared vision and an effective strategy, people are likely to pull in different directions, and the chances of creating a successful product are slim. While vision and strategy are key, describing them can be challenging. This post introduces the Product Vision Board, a tool that helps you capture the vision and product strategy.
The Definition of Ready in Scrum
“Ready are you? What know you of ready?” says Yoda to Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movie “The Empire Strikes Back.” Just as it’s important for Luke to understand what “ready” means, so is it for product owners. Luckily, you don’t have to become a Jedi to find out. Reading this post will do.
How to Make Your Product Fail
This blog post provides a tongue-in-cheek collection of common product creation mistakes. Combined they are a recipe for certain failure and provide a lesson in how not to develop products. Sadly, they are not made-up but based on my experience working with different companies and teams. I hope that listing the mistakes helps you avoid them thereby increasing your chances of developing a successful product.