We review two contrasting perspectives on the role of the Product Owner. From the PO that was able to stay in the problem-domain to the PO that wanted to order developers around. Two contrasting approaches that have wildly different impacts on the teams they work with.
The Great Product Owner: Defining User Stories in the Problem-Domain
Many User Stories end up being written from the “solution” perspective. Reinald found that Product Owners that are willing to define stories from the perspective of the problem to solve are better able to communicate their ideas to the team. But there are other benefits from taking this approach. Listen in to learn about the other benefits of having your Product Owner firmly anchored in the Problem domain as opposed to the solution domain.
The Bad Product Owner: The “I’m better than my developers” Product Owner
When Product Owners have a background in development it is natural that they may concentrate on the details, but the problems really start when the PO starts telling programmers how to write code, and steering development decisions. Listen in to learn how to deal with such Product Owners.
Are you having trouble helping the team working well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at: bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.
About Reinald Kirchner
Reinald is active in the IT industry for more than 20 years. With agile methods and systemic project management he found his role as coach to inspire individuals and teams to learn, have fun and get better at what they want to do.
You can link with Reinald Kirchner on XING and connect with Reinald Kirchner on Twitter.
