← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Coaching Product Owners to Be the Voice of the Customer | Steve Martin
00:13:55
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- [00:04]
A
Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership, that's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast. Hello everybody. Welcome to our tgif, our product owner episode, of course, this week with Steve Martin. Hey Steve.
- [01:19]
B
Welcome back, Pasco. Thank you. And yeah, it's great to be here for our final day.
- [01:25]
A
Absolutely our final day, which hopefully inspires many others to take action and either become better product owners. Hello there product owners. Or, or help others become better product owners. Wherever you are in that set of roles, we wish you good luck and we have some experience and stories to share with you. So let's start with a anti pattern. We'll talk about great product owners later Steve, but for now, share with us potentially the worst product owner anti pattern you've witnessed in your career.
- [02:01]
B
Yeah, thanks Vasco. You know, I feel pos get a, they get criticized a lot. We, you know, they have great intentions. I've worked with some amazing product owners, some great minds, you know, really good ideas and that kind of thing. I think where it tends to fall down is perhaps lack of training, lack of coaching. I've seen, you know, I've worked with commercial managers that are dressed up as pos. I've worked with project managers. In fact, project managers make really good product owners, by the way. And you know, rather than Scrum Masters, people always say project managers or Scrum Masters. Actually, I've seen some really good project managers who have taken that role. Product donors being spread across multiple teams, having very, very little time to focus on the team, focus on the customer. And also product owners who are basically the voice of senior management rather than being the voice of the customer, which.
- [03:08]
A
Is, we call those proxies.
- [03:10]
B
Right, proxies. Yeah, exactly. Being proxies.
- [03:16]
A
So when you think about this kind of challenges, like what is something we can do as Scrum Masters, Agile coaches and just generally interested in improving our industry, what can we do to help this product owner step out of those anti patterns? I'm thinking for example of that proxy of being the voice of the next manager in line instead of the customer. How do you help these product owners?
- [03:44]
B
For me it just comes down to helping them to understand their role. Most of the time it is really like I say, lack of training, lack of coaching. So if they, if they have that willingness, you know, we, we, we meet them where they are and help them to understand what, what good looks like and help them to see, you know, how we can help them. You know, the, the, the role of the product owner can, can actually be really effective, really impactful. So there's some, I mean I, I usually I start off with nice and simple. The, the Henry Henrik Neuberg video that you get on YouTube. The product owner.
- [04:31]
A
Yeah, we'll put a link on the show notes.
- [04:34]
B
Yeah, perfect. Fifteen minutes. It, it, you know I think that video is like 15 years old now like and it's still relevant today. It has not changed. The world has not changed. It's still as prevalent and as it has ever been. So that video is perfect. Product Ownership by Jeff Watts is a, is a really good book for them so you can showcase that. And if there is a real willingness and a desire then the CSPO course or the Product Ownership IC Agile course is great. Two days and you learn everything that you need to learn in the role. So that I think for me it's something that you know, it's, it's something for the Scrum Masters can really be supportive on. But there's one other tip I'd like to provide if I can is that the. Within the team there is leadership. Okay. There's not management, there shouldn't be management. This is something that is like day one of Agile 101, but there is leadership and the roles of technical lead, Scrum Master and product owner can play a vital role in the leadership and the structure of the team and the success of a team by working together. So for me, forming that relationship between those three and working together, setting out time in the week and just focusing on the customer, focusing on the pain points, the problems that teams are having and the general sort of system and how things, the processes and everything that are going on to really serve and support the team will help you as a Scrum Master will be Able to go much further and be able to support the product owner much better. Absolutely.
- [06:30]
A
We'll take all of those and the links that Steve just offered. Put those in the show notes. Now let's turn our attention to the opposite. Potentially the best product owner you've ever worked with. Steve, how did they work?
- [06:46]
B
You know, I gave this some real thought. The best product owner I've ever worked with is a guy called Rob Guard. And if he gets the chance to listen to this, I'm going to really massage his ego. News was always already pretty big. No, he, the thing about Robin, he's brilliant mind, real agilist. I learned a huge amount about Agile from him, which I can't say of any of the product owners that I've worked with. And you learn different things, but not about Agile. He was a real, a real advocate for it, so that was why he really stood out for me and he was always destined to go really far and, and I believe he's now CPO of like a big fintech firm. So he's, he's, he's thriving and that was always going to be the case. But the things that he did that really stood out, whether he was absolutely obsessed with the user, his, his focus and everything that he did was around what is, what is the problem, what is the, what is the pain point that our, that our users are having. He would spend, we, you know, we would be, we worked with engineering teams for the, for the military so that they were our customers and so he would have workshops with them regularly to understand what pain points they were suffering and just be, literally be the voice of the customer. Working with the, with the engineering teams. He would be pushing them, challenging them and trying to help them become more innovative. So he was always looking to see about better ways of providing better software for, for their, for the teams that we were building software for. And that was it, that was, that was his, the beauty of the work that he would do was everything, as I say, was all about the customer, all about the user. And the other thing as well was that he would always be, it was just the way that he would communicate user stories and the, I always call it briefing. You're briefing the team like this is the problem, right? We sort of, we get caught up in, I mean we get caught in anti patterns ourselves. When we go into things like refinement sessions, we just read out the story, we just, you know, go through the motion. We go through the motions. But real product ownership is about telling a story and being able to help the team to really empathize and understand what the pain is like for them, what the problem is happening for them so that they can then start thinking like the customer. And that was his gift, was that he was able to communicate that problem into the minds of the team so they could serve them better.
- [09:54]
A
That's well said. The role of the peer really is to help the team empathize with the user, the customer of the product, because that's how they can develop great solutions. Steve, thank you for sharing that. We're getting close to the end though. But before we go, where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?
- [10:13]
B
Great stuff. Well, thanks Vasco. Yeah, well I, I have a YouTube channel, the Agile Mastery show so you can come and come and find me on that. And I do do one to one interviews and also me talking to camera, giving some tips and guidance basically building mastery for Scrum masters and Agile coaches. And then there's also the Agile Mastery Club as well, which is a, an online community which is pretty, it's basically being set up to replace LinkedIn which, which is I think needed from people nowadays. And it's very much a, it's a growing community, it's very small at the moment but it's all about sharing ideas, best practice and we do, we do some events and drop in clinics and that kind of thing. And then I also run mentorship programs as well. One to one and group mentorship programs so people can come and find me on that as well.
- [11:13]
A
We'll put the link to all of those in the show notes. Steve, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for being here and for being so generous with your time and your knowledge.
- [11:22]
B
Pasco, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you and keep doing what you're doing because you're doing some wonderful work with, for our community. It's great to the work that you do. So keep going.
- [11:38]
A
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- [13:28]
B
Slack.
- [13:31]
A
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