The Professional Product Owner's Guide to Maximizing Value with Scrum

"This book presents a method of communicating our desires, cogently, coherently, and with a minimum of fuss and bother."

-Ken Schwaber, Chairman & Founder, Scrum.org

The role of the Product Owner is more crucial than ever. But it's about much more than mechanics: it's about taking accountability and refocusing on value as the primary objective of all you do. In The Professional Product Owner, two leading experts in successful Scrum product ownership show exactly how to do this. You'll learn how to identify where value can be found, measure it, and maximize it throughout your entire product lifecycle.

Drawing on their combined 40+ years of experience in using agile and Scrum in product management, Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham guide you through all facets of envisioning, emerging, and maturing a product using the Scrum framework. McGreal and Jocham discuss strategy, showing how to connect Vision, Value, and Validation in ROI-focused agile product management. They lay out Scrum best-practices for managing complexity and continuously delivering value, and they define the concrete practices and tools you can use to manage Product Backlogs and release plans, all with the goal of making you a more successful Product Owner. Throughout, the authors share revealing personal experiences that illuminate obstacles to success and show how they can be overcome.

• Define success from the "outside in," using external customer-driven measurements to guide development and maximize value
• Fill the "product management vacuum" by bringing empowerment and entrepreneurship to the Product Owner's role
• Align everyone behind a shared model of how to create, deliver, and capture value
• Use Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt) to invest in the right places, make smarter decisions, and reduce risk
• Effectively apply Scrum's Product Owner role, artifacts, and events
• Populate and manage Product Backlogs, and use just-in-time specifications
• Plan and manage releases, improve transparency, and reduce technical debt
• Scale your product, not your Scrum

• Use Scrum to inject autonomy, mastery, and purpose into your product team's work Whatever your role in product management or agile development, this guide will help you deliver products that offer more value, more rapidly, and more often.

  Autorentext

  Don McGreal, in his role as VP of Learning Solutions at Improving (improving.com), is a hands-on agile consultant and instructor. He specializes in agile coaching at the enterprise and product management levels within larger organizations. Don is a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer who has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe. He is also co-founder of TastyCupcakes.org, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles. Don is a course steward for the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner course taught around the world.

  Ralph Jocham is a German citizen who spent the last 20 years collecting professional software and product development experience in France, the UK, the USA, and now Switzerland. He became an Agile evangelist in 2000 and perfected his approach at ThoughtWorks. Ralph also is Europe's first trainer with Scrum.org and has taught thousands of professionals around the globe. When not busy running his company, Effective Agile (effectiveagile.com), or helping all kinds of enterprises in Europe, he enjoys teaching at universities. Ralph nevertheless finds time to spend quality time with his family on a regular basis, treating them to home-cooked international fine cuisine and going on long walks with the family dog. Ralph is a course steward for the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner course taught around the world.

  Inhalt

  Foreword xiii

  Introduction xv

  Acknowledgments xxi

  About the Authors xxiii

  Part I: Strategy 1

  Chapter 1: Agile Product Management 3

  Quiz 3

  Product Mindset versus Project Mindset 4

  What Is Product Management? 7

  The Product Management Vacuum and the Three Vs 9

  Product Management and Scrum 15

  The Product Owner 18

  Defining a Product 22

  Quiz Review 31

  Chapter 2: Vision 33

  Quiz 33

  Business Modeling 35

  Product Vision 40

  Technical Strategy 51

  Quiz Review 53

  Chapter 3: Value 55

  Quiz 55

  Value Defined 56

  Delivering Value 57

  Value Metrics 60

  Evidence-Based Management 65

  Tracking Metrics 83

  Where Your Money Goes 85

  Negative Value 86

  Value Neutrality 89

  Quiz Review 92

  Chapter 4: Validation 93

  Quiz 93

  Stakeholder Feedback 95

  Marketplace Feedback 97

  Pivot or Persevere 104

  Quiz Review 108

  Part II: Scrum 109

  Chapter 5: Empiricism 111

  Quiz 111

  It's a Complex Problem 111

  Certainty Quiz 115

  Visualizing Complexity 116

  Cynefin 118

  Types of Complexity 126

  Managing Risk 126

  Quiz Review 133

  Chapter 6: Scrum 135

  Quiz 135

  Why a Framework? 136

  The Pillars of Scrum 139

  Scrum Roles 141

  Scrum Artifacts 154

  Scrum Events 164

  Iterative and Incremental 184

  Agile Manifesto for Software Development 186

  Quiz Review 188

  Part III: Tactics 189

  Chapter 7: Product Backlog Management 191

  Quiz 191

  What Is a Requirement? 192

  Product Backlog Ordering 209

  "Done" 215

  "Ready" Is a Mindset 224

  Story Mapping 232

  Impact Mapping 236

  Success Criteria 239

  Specification by Example 241

  Quiz Review 248

  Chapter 8: Release Management 249

  Quiz 249

  Reasons to Release 250

  Release Strategy 251

  Estimation and Velocity 259

  Scaling Products 267

  Reporting 273

  Budgeting 289

  Governance and Compliance 294

  Kickoff 300

  Quality 304

  Quiz Review 313

  Chapter 9: The Professional Product Owner 315

  Understanding Product Owner Success 316

  Skills and Traits 318

  Measuring Success 321

  Index 323