Published by Addison-Wesley Professional (March 22, 2023) © 2023
Chris Lukassen | Robbin SchuurmanHone Agile Product Owner Behaviors that Lead to Marketplace Winners
Organizations pour vast resources into building new products and services. Yet too many are poorly conceived, don't delight (or even satisfy) customers, and fail in the marketplace. The solution is more effective agile product ownership and product management. This book is an expert guide to the behaviors, stances, and practices of world-class agile product development, reflecting deep in-the-trenches experience from world-renowned experts.
Chris Lukassen and Robbin Schuurman introduce powerful tools, ideas, and skills for delivering superior products and services, and for avoiding pitfalls that keep you from seeing what customers really need and want. Learn through a start-to-finish, Scrum-based case study, drawing on concepts the authors created for their breakthrough Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner-Advanced (PSPO-A) training course. This innovative approach has already helped thousands of product owners excel--and it can transform the way you create products.
- Replace negative product owner behaviors with approaches that lead to excellence
- Represent customers more empathetically and effectively
- Connect customers, values, and features more coherently
- Tell better stories, set clearer goals, and create more valuable roadmaps
- Innovate business models, run better experiments, and scale products more successfully
- Make more successful decisions, involve the right people, and rely on better data
- Become a great agile collaborator, across governance, budgeting, contracting, and beyond
- Influence customers, users, stakeholders, and teams to improve your overall effectiveness
- Optimize every organizational role related to product ownership
Product owners, managers, and team leads will find this guide indispensable along with Agile/Scrum coaches, consultants, and executives wanting to generate more value from product management across the organization.
Foreword by Dave West xvii
Introduction xxi
Part I. The Stances of the Product Owner 1
Chapter 1. Agile Product Management 3
Is It Product Owner or Product Manager? 3
What Is Product Management? 4
Working in a Product-Led, Sales-Led, or Marketing-Led Organization 6
What Is a Product Owner? 7
Different Types of Product Owners 9
Chapter 2. Introducing the Product Owner Stances 3
The Misunderstood Stances of a Product Owner 17
The Preferred Stances of a Product Owner 27
Part I Summary 35
Part II. The Customer Representative 37
Chapter 3. How to Identify and Define Product 39
Introducing the Customer Representative 39
What Is a Product? 43
Chapter 4. Building Customer Empathy 49
Talking to Customers 49
Observing Customers 49
Effectively Dealing with Biases When Collaborating with Customers 51
Chapter 5. Capture Your Customer Insights Via Personas 55
User Personas 55
Creating Personas 56
Chapter 6. Identifying and Expressing Customer Value 61
The Functional Elements of Value 63
Emotional Elements of Value 64
Life-Changing Elements of Value 64
Social-Impact Element of Value 65
Chapter 7. Connecting Product Features to Outcomes and Impacts 67
Connecting Goals, Impacts, Outcomes, and Features 68
Part II Summary 73
Part III. The Visionary 77
Chapter 8. Creating and Communicating Product Vision 79
Introducing: The Visionary 79
Connecting the Product Vision to the Company Mission, Vision, and Values 83
A Product Vision Aligned with the Company Mission and Vision 87
Elements of an Inspiring Product Vision 90
Chapter 9. Communicating the Product Vision Effectively 93
The 3x3 Storytelling Framework 95
The Power of Reasoning 99
Make It SEXI 100
Chapter 10. Crafting Product Goals That Align Stakeholders and Teams 103
What Is a Product Goal? 104
Characteristics of Great Product Goals 106
How to Create Product Goals 108
Inspect and Adapt Product Goals 109
Having Multiple Product Goals: Is That an Option? 110
Chapter 11. Creating the Right Product Roadmap for Your Audience 113
Introduction to Product Roadmaps 113
Types of Product Roadmaps 117
Roadmap 1: The Goal-Oriented Roadmap 118
Roadmap 2: The Now-Next-Later Roadmap 120
Roadmap 3: The User Story Map 122
Roadmap 4: The Visual Roadmap 124
Roadmap 5: The Gantt Chart Roadmap 126
Eleven Tips for Roadmap Creation 128
Chapter 12. Identification of Company Value and Impact 131
Understanding Company Value and Impact 131
Expressing Company Impact 137
Key Value Area 1: Current Value 139
Key Value Area 2: Unrealized Value 141
Key Value Area 3: Time to Market 145
Key Value Area 4: Ability to Innovate 147
Chapter 13. Maximizing Value through Effective Pricing Strategies and Tactics 151
Introduction to Product Pricing 151
The Product Pricing Process 153
Part III Summary 165
Part IV. The Experimenter 169
Chapter 14. Driving Inside-Out Product Innovation 171
Introducing: The Experimenter 171
Inside-Out Innovation Sources 175
Chapter 15. Driving Outside-In Product Innovation 183
Outside-In Innovation Sources 183
Market Segmentation 184
Chapter 16. Thinking Differently: Driving Business Model Innovation 189
Market Analysis and Trends 189
Getting Inspiration from Other Companies 191
The Impact on Your Business 196
The Return of the Business Model Canvas 197
Chapter 17. Selecting Product Experiments to Run 199
The Truth Curve: Select the Right Experiments and Tests 199
Experimentation Techniques Explained 203
Chapter 18. How to Design and Evaluate Experiments and Tests 215
Defining Hypothesis 216
Capture Learnings 218
Chapter 19. Approaches for Scaling Successful Products and Teams 221
Scaling Approaches for People and Teams 221
Typical Antipattern for Scaling People and Teams 224
A Better Approach for Scaling People and Teams 227
Approaches to Scaling the Product or Service 229
Focus on the Product First, Then on People and Teams 230
Eight Effective Strategies for Scaling a Product 232
How Product Owners Contribute to Product Scaling 235
Part IV Summary 237
Part V. The Decision Maker 241
Chapter 20. Improving Accountability, Maturity, and Authority 243
Introducing: The Decision Maker 243
Chapter 21. Evaluating Your Product Decisions 255
Product Management: A Game of Poker or Chess? 255
Evaluating Decisions in an Honest and Transparent Way 258
Chapter 22. Make Better Decisions: Thinking in Bets 259
The Buddy System or Decision Pod 260
Accepting Uncertainty in Decision Making 261
Chapter 23. Navigating Product, Process, and Team Dilemmas and Decisions 263
Making Choices 263
Navigating Dilemmas 265
Chapter 24. Improving the Speed and Quality of Decisions 269
The Cost of Delaying Decisions 269
Fast Decisions Are More Successful than Slow Decisions 270
Special Snowflake Syndrome 273
Why You Should Probably Make Decisions Fast(er) 274
How to Speed Up Your Decision Making 274
Empowered Product Owners 275
Part V Summary 277
Part VI. The Collaborator 281
Chapter 25. How Agile Governance Affects Product Owners 283
Introduction to the Collaborator 283
Introducing Agile Governance 287
Organizational Governance Entails Many Elements 291
Effectively Dealing with Governance 295
Chapter 26. Product Budgeting Done in an Agile Way 297
Three Horizons 298
Budgeting Is Like Product Backlog Management 300
A Strategy and Market Perspective on Budgeting 304
Chapter 27. Creating Contracts That Enable Great Product Ownership and Teamwork 309
What Is a Contract? 310
Who Takes the Risk? 313
Two-Stage Contracts 314
Joe's Bucket 316
Money for Nothing 317
Change for Free 318
Elements of an Agile Contract 319
Part VI Summary 323
Part VII. The Influencer 327
Chapter 28. Stakeholder Management in Complex Environments 329
Introducing: The Influencer 329
Definition of Stakeholder 333
Stakeholder Classification/Categorization 335
Information and Insights to Gather on Stakeholders 338
The Influence of the Stakeholder 340
Chapter 29. Tools for Stakeholder Classification and Grouping 343
The Stakeholder Map 344
The Stakeholder Radar 351
Alternative Stakeholder Identification and Grouping Techniques 357
Chapter 30. Applying Stakeholder Management Strategies and Tactics in Practice 359
Creating a Communication Strategy 359
Tips for Improving Your Stakeholder Management in Practice 362
Chapter 31. How to Influence Stakeholders on All Levels 369
Being a Lyrebird 369
The Process of Communication 371
Four Layers of Communication 374
Building Relationships with Stakeholders 375
Adapting Your Tune to Your Audience 382
Chapter 32. Mastering the Art of No to Optimize Value Creation for the Product 387
What Makes Saying No So Hard? 388
Five Steps toward Saying No Effectively 389
The Jedi Mind Trick 392
Chapter 33. Negotiating With Stakeholders, Customers, and Users 393
Be a Mirror 394
Label Emotions 395
Getting to Yes! 396
How to Tell If a Yes Is Real 398
Bend Their Reality 398
Create the Illusion of Control 400
Guarantee Execution 400
Bargain Hard 401
Find the Black Swan 402
Part VII Summary 405
Closing Summary 409
Index 413