C (3:43)

I take a very empathetic look at these individuals. These are people that have maybe fallen into the role that aren't necessarily passionate about the role. They don't know what great looks like, they've never seen great themselves. They're also very time poor. Like my take on the product owner role is, it is one of the hardest roles in an organization. From a time perspective, it depends whether you have analysts in the squad, depends how you set up. Like in a lot of organizations I work in, there's high legislative, there's high risk, there's compliance, there's, you know, as a team you're also doing, you know, fail and fix work. There's just so much pipeline of work coming in that it's hard to even have breathing space to think strategically. And so because they're always drowning in the day to day, they're not investing in taking a step back and looking at that strategic pipeline. Is this the right work that we should be doing and actually really critically assessing for all these little micro bits of work that comes through, should we be doing it? Is there something that's of bigger bang for the my buck as a squad?

B (4:57)

I really like how you call it the strategic pipeline because it really is right. Like product owners are constantly bombarded with ideas from the team, from other teams, from the customers, from support people, from management, from other product owners. They're constantly bombarded with ideas and requests and sometimes even demands. And if product owners don't have a very clear understanding of what the strategy and the vision is for the product, who are the really important users and customers and who are other users and customers that are not as important? It's very hard to make decisions because the amount of requests and demands coming in is so large that without a guiding North Star, if you will, the only thing we can do is tackle as many of those as we could.

C (5:46)

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, to go back to that human element that we were talking about yesterday, often people don't feel vulnerable because this is quite a significant leadership role. And so to be vulnerable to say I don't know, some things is also really hard for this group of people and put themselves out there with, I have these hypotheses and assumptions that I've got to test and validate. Again, that puts a level of scrutiny on themselves that they may not feel comfortable on. And so there's a real confidence that good product owners need. At the same time, that's not just a confidence, that's a vulnerability that I could be wrong, that I might not be the best and the smartest person and the biggest SME on this product until I go test some things.

B (6:47)

Yeah, absolutely. And this confidence needs to come with what you just said. Like this ability to think that, okay, maybe this could be wrong, so it's confidence, but at the same time also vulnerability, or being humble to the data coming in and being able to understand, okay, maybe this was the wrong decision and that's okay. I don't need to be committed to a decision I made before I knew better.

A (7:11)

Right?

C (7:13)

Yeah. And then on top of that, I feel that there's a lot of organizations that still have a bit of old school thinking around, you know, the people that I hire and I pay them a lot of money for, they should have all these answers. And so is there even safety to fail in these organizations for these product owners? And I think in a lot of cases there is not.

B (7:32)

Yeah, that's a very good and important aspect. Because if there isn't safety, then of course there can't be vulnerability either.

C (7:40)

Yeah.

B (7:41)

But there aren't only product owners in trouble. Some product owners are actually excellent at the work that they do. So share with us one of those examples, potentially the best product owner you've ever worked with, Rene.

C (7:55)

There was one product owner who actually was a chief product owner. So in the area that I was in at the time, we had about 13 teams at one stage delivering this one product. And there was a few product owners underneath them. But you know what really made them especially different is a few things. Number one, whenever they interacted with all of the product owners, not just in the area that I was in, but even broader as well, they really iterated, I think, five key principles quite consistently. I can't remember the five off the top of my head. But the one thing that did really shape my thinking at that time was analytics from day one. And so they kept pushing that it's not enough to build something brand new. We have to know straight away, day one, if this is working or not. We actually have to understand our customers behavior day one or not. And they said this is one of our most highest priority items that we need to deliver across the board. I think they also knew innovation very well. And that's not something that we often think of in product owners as a key talent. They knew what was happening out in Silicon Valley. They regularly spent time there. They knew what the direction was happening in that space. So they knew what the market was going towards. They had a clear vision of the product that they were really able to sell the dream on really well. And they also were really good at, and it sounds really weird, but giving urgency. So at the time we were in a bit of what we call a space race. There was another organization was trying to build something very similar. One of the leaders at the time left and went to that organization talking, taking the roadmap and some of the IP with them. And so we knew it was a bit of a competition as to who was going to go to the market first. And so they rallied us in a way that we knew there was an urgency to it, but it was never an option to compromise on quality. And that was beautiful.

B (10:06)

That's the best combination, right? Like the sense of mission, like this urgency that you talk about, the sense of mission, the importance of the work, but also the balancing effect of never compromising on quality. I think that's a really amazing product owner if they can do that. Rene, it's been a pleasure. We're getting close to the end of this week of conversations, amazing conversations. But before we go, where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?

C (10:38)

You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm Agile Renee. I have for a while have my own blog site called agileforest.com. you can find some tips and tricks around scaling agile there as well. I have a defunct podcast that I haven't talked on for a while, which is the Agile Revolution, but it has hundreds of podcasts on it where I can speak with. I know you probably know Craig Smith and Tony Ponton. So we have interviewed a lot of people there as well. There's some really great interviews there where you can sort of understand some of the basics and some of the different ways of thinking from an agile perspective.

B (11:19)

Absolutely. We'll put the link to all of those in the show, notes for people to check it out. There's so much great work done by Renee and many others. So do check out the podcast. I'm sure you will find topics that are of interest and why not to a follow up conversation on LinkedIn. Get connected. We are a community learning together how to develop software better after all. Rene, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.

C (11:46)

Thanks, Fesco. And thank you everybody for listening.

A (11:51)

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B (13:20)

And.

A (13:20)

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B (13:46)

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