Product Ownership

A 1 day product ownership course compressed into 15 minute animated presentation.

Quite simply, one of the best videos on Agile. Henrik Kniberg is able to condense an entire day course into a 15 minute well done primer on the agile role and responsibilities of a Product Owner. It summarizes the key points of agile software development, providing an excellent overview covering stories, prioritization, planning and scaling. A timeless video that should be watched by everyone in the agile world.

The basics of story mapping and how to scope a minimum viable product.

Story mapping is the part of the complex product management process where define what the problem is and why it exists. In this article, Christian Strunk shares how he used to create story maps and how he teaching others to execute them these days. You will learn the basics, and three levels of a user story map, along with how to build it in with a lean-agile mentality.

Looking at what it means to bring a focused, valuable Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to market.

All too often, products are brought to market with a feature-first approach. A list of functions that are needed to meet business goals such as sign-ups or downloads, views or shares. There’s little thought that’s gone into who the user of the product will be, what their goals are, and what it will take to provide meaningful value to them. We’ll look at what it means to bring a focused, valuable Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to market. An MVP that can help you learn how to better serve your users, and the business that’s footing the bill.

Epics have taken on a variety of meanings in software development.

Writing a definition for epic isn’t nearly as simple as it should be. The term "epic" has taken on multiple meanings as it is used in different environments, and when it comes to dealing with the team's backlog those disparate meanings can cause quite a bit of confusion. Kent McDonald shares what he sees as the most common interpretations of epics, and what he has found to be the best way to deal with the misunderstandings.

A complete guide to User Stories and how to use them to drive thoughtful, collaborative, adaptive product development.

This article will show you how to create better user stories. You’ll learn how to write them like a designer, test them like an entrepreneur, and use them to drive better discussions like an agile coach.

The Product Owner ensures that there is a Product Backlog, that it is ordered, and that it is made available to both the Scrum Team and stakeholders.

Scrum is intended as a simple, yet sufficient framework for complex product delivery. Scrum is not a one-size-fits-all solution, a silver bullet or a complete methodology. Instead, Scrum provides the minimal boundaries within which teams can self-organize to solve complex problems with an empirical approach. This simplicity is its greatest strength, but also the source of many misinterpretations and myths.

Visualizations to help you understand & communicate key product mgt. ideas.

Through the use of graphical visualizations, Curtis Stanier identifies 6 common product management conceptual mistakes. The usage of visuals is surprisingly helpful in understanding what the issues actually are, and a hint of how to properly apply the concept is given for each of the 6 themes.

Eight alternatives ways to represent and manage your product backlog to make it more impactful.

The Product Backlog tends to grow, seemingly exponentially, as the product matures and more users enter the system. With more and more cases to handle, it becomes essential to groom the backlog in different ways depending on context. Anthony Murphy shares 8 different ways you can organize your backlog to get the visualization that you need for every situation. Each organization illuminates clarity onto the backlog from a different perspective.

Defining the goals of a product to understand what value means and how to decide what to deliver and when.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Stephanie Ockerman looks at many aspects that define a product and its goals. She addresses some of the questions around what value means and how value is critical to deciding on what to deliver for the product and when.

Concepts around handling complexity in Agile at scale.

In a very quick overview of what is a team backlog and how to effectively manage it, the SAFe team explains the basic concepts of handling team tasks. Besides defining what the team backlog is and how to handle it, this article explains how to optimize value delivery and system health with capacity allocation, and how to handle backlog refinement.

Arguing that estimation is a bad thing, particularly in the Agile world, and presents ways to plan that don't involve estimation.

Presenting Allen Holub's thinking (and many other's) thinking about #NoEstimates.

Analyzing wether its a good idea to break Product Backlog Items (PBIs) down into tasks or not.

The Sprint Backlog is flexible, as long as changes do not distract from the focus on the Sprint Goal.

Do Development Teams commit — essentially promise — to complete all the items on the Product Backlog each sprint? Can new insights during the Sprint result in changes to the Sprint Backlog? Or is it fixed? This post by Christiaan Verwijs addresses the myth that the Sprint Backlog is fixed during the Sprint. It makes the case that the Sprint Backlog is flexible, as long as changes do not distract from the focus on the Sprint Goal.