Product Owner

With many competing pulls on their time, product owners can be hard to catch during a sprint. Learn …

Is product owner the right role for you? Discover 4 skills product owners need, 5 popular paths to …

Learn what good product owners do to avoid 7 common product owner mistakes.

Learn six ways effective product owners ensure their teams’ success.

When writing user stories, how should agile teams handle non-functional requirements—desired …

Scrum Masters and product owners can develop a habit of making statements rather than asking …

Successful product owners will see their stakeholders as a team, not merely a set of individuals.

Recently the 2020 version of the Scrum Guide was released. What changes were made that you need to …

Our virtual Certified Scrum courses aren’t tedious 16-hour Zoom snoozefests. This video shows what …

Teams often struggle to persuade their product owners to prioritize refactoring. This simple …

It’s coming on Christmas. That time of year when I drop hints to my family about gifts I’d like.

Scrum has only three official roles: Scrum Master, product owner, and team member. No distinction …

Succeeding with agile isn’t just about knowing where to start, it’s about knowing where to go …

An agile product backlog should evolve over time, with product backlog items and user stories …

Telling a stakeholder you can’t work on their feature is difficult. Here are ways to make that …

Product owners often sacrifice progress toward important goals to put out short-term fires. There’s …

Advice on scaling agile projects by adding a chief product owner and sharing responsibility across …

Most agile processes are empty of any advice on forming a company or product strategy. Product …

“Large-Scale Scrum” by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde is great for anyone looking to scale Scrum up to …

In this agile principles post from Mike Cohn, discover how Scrum organizations define products. …

My wife, daughters and I use Wunderlist to manage our shared grocery list. Any time one of us …

I've written before that we should only estimate if having the estimate will change someone's …

I’ve noticed something disturbing over the past two years. And it’s occurred uniformly with teams …

A lot of agile literature stresses that product owners must prioritize the delivery of value. I’m …

In general, a Scrum product owner's job is to specify what to build, not how to build it. Read this …

Learn about product backlog refinement: how, when, and why the agile team and product owner refine …

A product owner hands 10 story cards to the team. The team reads them and hands the fifth and sixth …

Of course, the answer is the whole team – that collective of ScrumMaster plus product owner plus …

Hey, ScrumMaster: Step away from the index cards! You should not be a team’s product owner if you …

There are two primary ways for planning a sprint: velocity-driven sprint planning and …

“Working software over comprehensive documentation.” You’ve certainly seen...

Martin Lapointe shares how he and his family used Scrum to manage their recent relocation from …

In last month’s newsletter I wrote about how we make personal financial decisions in a now vs. …

In 2001, author Ray Bradbury gave a talk at the annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea in San Diego. …

I think I’d like to buy a big-screen plasma television. And maybe after that, a new amplifier for …

I've been playing a fair amount of Go lately. If you're not familiar with Go, it's a strategy game …

Yes, I really did refer to guitarist Alvin Lee in a Certified Scrum Product Owner class last week. …

It's May, and we're well into spring now. If you're like me, you haven't yet done your annual …

You may have heard Scrum is one of the leading agile software development processes. With more than …

Just because a shorter schedule is more important most of the time, does not mean it is more …

Participants in my Certified ScrumMaster courses are often surprised when I recommend that …

I recommend using Planning Poker on product backlog items rather than on the tasks that make up a …

Vision and Backlog

Scrum is a great framework for building a product with the right features. It …

All of a Scrum team’s members should be present when playing Planning Poker. You may be tempted to …

To see how this applies to an agile project, consider the issue of whether a team should earn …

It's always good to have a Plan B. And all Scrum teams do--it's called an abnormal termination.

An …

In last month's newsletter I wrote about the idea that everything happens within a sprint. There is …

I recently helped to facilitate a two-day planning session for an important initiative at Adobe …

Happy New Year! It's resolution time. A ScrumMaster may want to resolve to praise the team more often.

A common question I get is how can a product owner (or team) be sure they've thought...

As much as I value estimating the product backlog, not every team needs to do it. And those who do …

Humans are natural hoarders and that’s why we often find ourselves in Backlog bedlam!

I worked with a team last week that had three business people who each established the team's …

Even if you've taken the often stated agile stance of getting rid of periodic performance reviews …

They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure—this adage definitely applies to new …

One of the biggest problems with having a sprint zero is that it establishes a precedent that there …

Is your agile team excluding the Scrum product owner from your sprint retrospectives? Check out …

It is sometimes beneficial to write stories for someone other than the user.

I've never been a big fan of the Shewhart or Deming cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act. Sure, it works fine …

The book is a comprehensive overview of Scrum. It goes from the principles of agile through the …

An organization's Wise Architects often provide requirements to a team in the form of …

Does a team have to work with user stories to do Scrum? Of course not.

The vast majority of what has been written about agile processes is intended for programmers and …

Building the right product at the right time is just as important as building a quality product. …

Product owners are typically asked to prioritize based on the nebulous term “business value.” But …

The vast majority of what has been written about agile processes is intended for programmers and …

Planning is the act of thinking about the future. Sometimes that future holds risk and uncertainty. …

I'm trying to create a list of the biggest, most common, or hardest to overcome agile problems that …

Scrum Masters need to protect agile teams from more than just overly aggressive product owners. …

Doing performance testing creates some amount of overhead on the team (the tax). This overhead or …

Left unattended, a product backlog can become large and hard to work with. If your backlog has …

My usual recommendation is to assign points to bug fixing the agile defects. This really achieves …

A common question is whether it's acceptable to combine the role of product and ScrumMaster and …

A project management office (PMO) that is engaged in and supportive of transitioning to Scrum can …

It would be nearly impossible to remove all dependencies between product backlog items and so our …

High-performing Scrum teams have learned to do a little bit of everything during a sprint, thereby …

As a project management framework, Scrum introduces many changes. One of the biggest is the role of …

Teams with subgroups formed around compatible skills, attitudes and approaches to work are less …

People often ask me whether teams should have the right to vote members off. To help answer that …

A DEEP product backlog is detailed appropriately, estimated, emergent and prioritized.

The difference on a Scrum project is not that intentional design is thrown out, but that it is done …

The ideal situation is to put the bugs right onto the product backlog.

Each person on the team should ideally be able to see each other person on the team.

We've already overloaded the word backlog with product backlog and sprint backlog. Why confuse …

Rolling lookahead planning is a useful technique for large projects or any project with external …

Treemaps are an excellent way of visualizing large product backlogs.

Not everyone involved in an agile transition wants the change to be successful. This …

By producing a single chart that shows both a team's rate of progress and the product backlog, we …

When a team plans a sprint they make a commitment to complete the user stories they select from the …

Sprint planning meetings typically go into deeper detail than is appropriate for product backlog …

What my friend had found is that his product owners had evolved in adaptation to their environment, …

While I want teams to come to agreement, I don't care how heartfelt the agreement is.

The scrum of scrums meeting is an important technique in scaling Scrum to large project teams. …

The selection of a new Scrum team’s ScrumMaster can impact the success or failure of the team's …

One of the challenges in new product innovation is that the process cannot be broken down into a …

Many teams try to divide and conquer when it comes to sprint planning, often with disjointed and …

An academic paper that describes the importance of using more than just the vaguely defined …

An experience report presented at XP2006 covering why it is not as simple as telling product owners …

Change may be a constant, but it doesn't have to be constant. By following some simple guidelines, …

This article presents very specific advice on seven things a product owner or customer can do to …