Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (3:03)

How do you work with this?

Nigel Baker (3:05)

Well, one final.

Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (3:06)

Business analysts, or, I don't know, proxy pos, whatever they might be, end up being called. But how do you work with them to get them to understand that that ownership and the process of getting there is so critical?

Nigel Baker (3:20)

Well, I use a simple phrase. Accountability requires ability. If they want you to take responsibility, accountability for this work, you have to have the ability to see that through. Without that, you're a sacrificial lamb. Now, Vasco, you come from the world of project management. You know what it's like to be a sacrificial lamb. Because many project managers, that was their job. Literally, they couldn't steer it. They had to track it and then get shot when the thing ran late. It was like, really unfair on project management. We don't want to recreate that in product management. So what I would do with those pos is I would explain the situation, right? They will not be happy. And then I would say, okay, how do we go about getting power? How do we go? So what I would normally do is trace up the line to find the person with real power, real power, the one who actually can make these choices. I would then reveal to them that they are actually the PO and they need to get involved.

Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (4:15)

Or

Nigel Baker (4:18)

they could delegate it to someone officially, and nine times out of ten, that person goes, I'm far too busy. I'm far too powerful. I haven't got time for this. I will delegate officially to X. Now, sometimes X is the person you were given, but sometimes it isn't. But that's the key person, because we've now officially handed power to that person to do that work. And that would be who I would have bpo and then maybe the analyst. If it's not them, and often it is them, but if it isn't them, they can be part of the scrum team assisting them. Like, when I was a po, I didn't have time to write a single story. I was waving my arms and talking a lot like I'm doing now. Arm wave. And so what I had to do was have business analysts on the team filling the gaps, writing some of the requirements for me, you know, filling in acceptance criteria, actually doing a lot of the legwork because I just was covering too many teams at once.

Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (5:10)

Yeah, absolutely. And for me, the understanding of the product owner role needs to evolve. Like, I'll give a concrete example A lot of the product owner role, especially earlier in a development process or then even later. But when we need to collect feedback is a lot about communicating outwards. Right. Like it's talking to stakeholders, potentially customers, collecting information so that the team can have the answers they need. And if we focus the PO only on the aspect of writing the stories and making sure that the backlog is ordered and detailed and all of that, we, we're going to be losing all of that outward facing capacity of the product owner. So what I try to usually help the pos do is to establish a good alliance with somebody that is every day in the team. So could be the Scrum Master, could be a lead developer, could be a business analyst that actually does the work. We lovingly call that role the product backlog secretary because somebody needs to make sure the backlog is in order to. But that isn't always the proctor because the proctor might not even have the natural inclination to do that work.

Nigel Baker (6:23)

Yeah, I think when I was a po, I think I would have struggled to delegate prioritization because I always hate the word ordered. The word ordered gets used in the latest Scrum guide, but it's factually incorrect. I know where they changed the word to order. They changed it because some of the Scrum guides didn't translate correctly into foreign languages. With the word prioritized, it looked like it meant most valuable first, when in fact prioritized in the English dictionary means most important first. So actually backlogs are prioritized, they're not ordered. So the actual guide's incorrect. But doing that ordering, that prioritisation of most important I feel is a really key thing for a po. Actually, the actual writing of the item, the creating of that item can be done by anyone, as you said, Scrum Master team, the whole team, a ba, anyone can do that, that work. But you're right, product tenants have an inward and outward focus. Right. And too much of the education's on the inward because too much of the outward is so variable because it's so context dependent in the business. Right. That outward facing work, it could be anything. If you're in a startup, it's making venture capitalists like if you're in a big enterprise, that could be, I don't know, working all your security stakeholders, there's a whole load of work there, but they need to have space and time to do that work. And I think, yeah, if you're right, if you don't empower the teams efficiently to help support all the Scrum process all the backlog then you're in trouble. But the big problem is, of course, businesses are expecting more from their pos, not less. So they're expecting POS to be scrum masters now as well. They're expecting them to do all the backup and facilitate all the meetings and fill in. And this is just two or three jobs for one pay packet, which for me is a pretty bad return on investment for the person doing the work.

Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (8:09)

Yeah, absolutely. Now there are, however, some cases of amazing proctors. Sometimes they look like jugglers, they feel like magicians, diplomats, all kinds of skins they can wear. But for you, Nigel, what did the best productor you've ever worked with work

Nigel Baker (8:28)

like the best product owner I work with? This is where it gets interesting because I work with so many, right, And I've liked a few of them for a few different reasons. Like I worked with one cto, right? And he was, at the time, I fundamentally disagreed with how he approached, right? But he, he basically approached the entire organization like it was a product, right? Had product, thinking of the thing as a whole rather than as being like a business unit or collection. He thought of it like a product, thought of it in terms of inputs, outputs, thought of, thought of it in terms of direction. And he had a very Alexander the Great approach, which was cutting the Gordian knot. He said, this thing's so Byzantine, it's so complex, it's so ridiculous how this organization is organized, right? There is no way to like empirically pull it apart. And so he just did the novel approach of smashing it on the floor. I disagreed with it. Then massively looking back now, I'm thinking, hmm, that was actually interesting. That was, I, I, I, I shouldn't have been so quick to judge because big, it needed a big impact to get anything moving. But the best POS I've seen have been more of that startup mentality where they're running experiments, they're learning, they have a vision, but the vision is for like a, not for end solution, but for an end world. So I'm thinking of one guy in particular, right? He had an idea of where he was going with his product, right? And what he, I don't know if I want to say what the product was, but what he, I'm trying to say in a way that doesn't give away the product. He had an idea of what the outcomes he had to achieve with that product, right? And then the solution itself, though he had strong beliefs about it, he was incredibly open minded to feedback from the engineering teams. A lot of most of the innovation of that product came out of his engineering teams. But plural, not singular of go, we could do this, we could do this. What about this? And he was like, yes, that's interesting. That's interesting. Let's bring that into this thing. And it did pivot the product along the way, right? Not like a major market shifting pivot. It wasn't like something heroic, you know, oh, my God, the world's changed pivot. But it was more that clever pivot of a. Of a captain sailing a boat through stormy waters, you know, knowing when to tack, when to turn, when to smoothly slide. This thing look maybe like, as another example, like, again, I don't know anything about skiing, so forgive my ignorance, but like a slalom skier, smoothly going from post to post, making the way down, making it look. Not effortless, but making it look natural, right? This sort of smooth learning, absorbing and taking things in and smoothly heading down the track. Because that level of smoothness gave the engineers great peace of mind. They felt, you know, he knows what. He knows what he's doing. Like, he knows, like, that he's not gonna. He's not gonna get swept around here. He knows what he's doing.

Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (11:33)

And that ability to build trust in the direction is so important because you need people to actually then pull it off. And if they don't trust the direction, they're not gonna pull it off because they're gonna second guess themselves and.

Nigel Baker (11:44)

Yeah.

Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (11:45)

And all kinds of anti patterns.

Nigel Baker (11:47)

And it's like, it's the great example of leadership. He didn't tell people he was. He didn't say things like, hey, trust me. Which is always the worst thing to say. You can trust me. Spoiler alert. But he, through his actions and behaviors, right, he led almost like in a servant leadership way. He didn't make a big fuss about being the big thing, but he led by showing the right behaviors. He led by not even showing the right behavior, showing new, cool, interesting behaviors that allowed everyone to go with him, right? So that's what really, I'm really excited by. Because myself, I'm not someone who gets flustered, but I'm not someone who you would regard as smooth. You know, I don't come across as one of those gentlemen like James Bond, you know, I come across as a bit more like Q for the Bond films, you know, and so I think I was impressed by that because it wasn't a fake smoothness. It wasn't a narcissism. It wasn't a psychopathy, which can seem like smoothness when someone's Like I don't care about you as a human, thus I'm smooth. It was, it was someone who was so in the zone, enjoying the experience, so much like going down that slalom, enjoying the experience, that you felt that, that, that joy and that smoothness come from them.

Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (13:08)

It's a great way to put it. Nigel, thank you for sharing that. And of course we're getting close to the end. But before we go and leave you, tell us where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?

Nigel Baker (13:22)

Yes, where can they find out? So I run a company called agile bear agilebear.com like a flexible earth sign animal. Agilebear.com I do agile training, coaching, consultancy. But these days I've just opened a new business arm we're now doing. Because people have asked me for years to do training and other stuff, like adjacent stuff. So historically I've always said no, I don't, I'm not going to talk about risk. I, I, I'm a Scrum person, right? But I've realized now that Agile can only go so far into not in terms of what it's capable of doing, but what people are capable of purchasing. Like, why would I buy Scrum Master training? I'm not a Scrum master. And so what we've done is expanded our portfolio up with another company. So I'm going to be teaching a lot more stuff on like leadership skills, on presentation skills, things like this, on how to run good workshops, on how to facilitate as a manager in a business, not as like a technical guy to try and sort of reach out a bit further across the wider boundaries. And by the way, if anyone's interested, there's. We are. A few of us are trying to, trying to, and now that big efforts on the word try are trying to get a bit of a think tank going on the future of the world of work. Not the future of Agile, but the future of the world of work and where it's going and how it could be a bit different. I don't think generally in our industry there is anywhere near enough. I hate the word thought leadership, but new ideas. There's lots of people reading old books and repeating other people's stuff and I would love us to do a bit more innovative thinking on new ways of working. So we called it the New New Agile Think Tank, I think, or maybe the New New Think Tank. I don't know what's going to come of it and when it's going to come, but we are and there's going to be no money involved. Sorry, but I would love to talk to anyone who's interested in that, in getting involved, in thinking about new ways of thinking. Because I think that needs to happen. Because if we don't do that, we're going to all end up pre Scrum, pre everything, and you'll end up being a resource manager in a very big miserable AI driven company. Hey, our CFO is Skynet. Great.

Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (15:33)

That's one worse. Because there are worse things than AI. Nigel, thank you very much. We'll put the link to all of those in the show notes, make sure that people find you and are able to interact with you. So everybody do reach out and why not ask a few follow up questions. It's been a a great week. Nigel. Thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.

Nigel Baker (15:55)

Thank you. It's been great fun and I've really enjoyed it. Hope to see you again soon. Bye everyone.

Vasco Duarte (16:01)

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Host (possibly Vasco Duarte or co-host) (17:53)

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