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Agile09: The Product Manager/Owner Dilemma
The document discusses the relationship between product managers and product owners in Agile development. It notes that while product owners focus on backlog management and user stories for iterations, product managers handle broader strategic responsibilities like market analysis, product strategy, and coordination with other teams. The document recommends that for small, co-located teams one person can fill both roles, but for more complex products the roles are best split, with the product manager focusing on outward-facing duties and a product owner representing customers to the development team. It warns that having one person try to fully cover both roles risks the product or market needs not being adequately represented.
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Agile09: The Product Manager/Owner Dilemma
- 1. The Agile ProductManager / Product Owner Dilemma Rich Mironov, CMO, Enthiosys rmironov@enthiosys.com © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 1
- 2. An Unapologetic ProductGuy • CMO at Enthiosys, agile product mgmt consultancy – Business models/pricing, roadmaps – Innovation Games® and customer needs – Agile transformation, interim PM executive • Repeat offender at software prod mgmt – Product Owner, 25 years as Product Mgr • “The Art of Product Management” • Agile 2009 PM/PO track • Founded P-Camp © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 2
- 3. Agenda • Context, scope,terminology – Development-only or inbound/outbound cross-functional? – Product strategy vs. vision vs. backlog – “Business value” vs. quarterly revenue goal • Why talk about product managers and product owners? • What does a product manager do? – Or… what do I mean when I say “product manager”? • How does this map to product owners? • Recommendations © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 3
- 4. My Biases • Focuson commercial software – Revenue-driven software companies and software- dependent products – Long-term success is measured in revenue, market share • Agile development is a (huge) part of business agility • Most product failures are market failures, not development failures • Product line strategies should exist before dev teams start serious work • Good product managers have first-hand experience marketing/selling/installing software © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 4
- 5. Disjoint Communities Product Agile Community Managers Nearly empty, very lonely © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 5
- 6. Product Owner? ProductManager? • Most Agilists think narrowly about product owners – Core member of agile team – Physically present most of the time – Driving user stories and sub-iteration decisions – Showcase provides primary customer input • Most product managers are not yet Agilists – Majority of work to deliver products (revenue) happens outside Engineering – Markets must be experienced directly, not filtered through Sales or Marketing or surveys – Servicing multiple inbound and outbound queues © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 6
- 7. What Does ProductManagement Do? budgets, staff, strategy, forecasts, commitments, roadmaps, targets Executives competitive intelligence market information, priorities, requirements, roadmaps, MRDs, Field input, personas, user stories… Market feedback Product Management Mktg & Markets & Development Sales Customers software Segmentation, messages, benefits/features, pricing, qualification, demos… © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 7
- 8. Product Management PlanningHorizons many years Strategy years Exec Portfolio many mons Product PM Release 2-9 mon Sprint 2 wk Dev Team Daily © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 8
- 9. “Above The Release” Customers Competitors VP x CxO CxO CxO VP y Strategy Portfolio Product Release Sprint Daily © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 9
- 10. Pragmatic Marketing® Framework Less Technical Business Marketing Positioning Plan Plan Market Market Buying Customer Pricing Problems Definition Process Acquisition Win/Loss Distribution Buy, Build Buyer Customer Analysis Strategy or Partner Personas Retention Strategic Distinctive Product Product User Program Tactical Competence Portfolio Profitability Personas Effectiveness Market Strategy Business Planning Programs Readiness Support Competitive Product Require- Launch Sales Presentations Innovation Landscape Roadmap ments Plan Process & Demos Technology Use Thought “Special” Collateral Assessment Scenarios Leadership Calls Status Lead Sales Event Dashboard Generation Tools Support Referrals & Channel Channel References Training Support More Technical © 1993-2009 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 10
- 11. Pragmatic Marketing® Framework Dir, Prod Strategy Prod Mktg Mgr Business Marketing Positioning Plan Plan Market Market Buying Customer Pricing Problems Definition Process Acquisition Win/Loss Distribution Buy, Build Buyer Customer Analysis Strategy or Partner Personas Retention Distinctive Product Product User Program Competence Portfolio Profitability Personas Effectiveness Market Strategy Business Planning Programs Readiness Support Competitive Product Require- Launch Sales Presentations Innovation Landscape Roadmap ments Plan Process & Demos Technology Use Thought “Special” Collateral Assessment Scenarios Leadership Calls Status Lead Sales Event Dashboard Generation Tools Support Tech Prod Mgr Referrals & Channel Channel References Training Support © 1993-2009 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 11
- 12. © 2009, EnthiosysInc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 12
- 13. What Does aProduct Owner Do? • “In Scrum, a single person must have final authority representing the customer's interest in backlog prioritization and requirements questions. This person must be available to the team at any time, especially during the sprint planning meeting and the sprint review meeting.” • Responsible for – Defining the features of the product – Deciding release date and content – Profitability of the product (ROI?) – Prioritizing features according to market value – Changing features and priority between iterations – Accepting or rejecting work results • How developers have defined product management © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 13
- 14. Ideal Product OwnerMust Be… • Omniscient, telepathic • Represent true market needs without spending a lot of time “in the field” • Manage complexities of detailed stories as well as marketplace financial tradeoffs • Very difficult to do “solo” – Nearly impossible without some product management experience © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 14
- 15. Product Owner’s Calendar Borrowed from Catherine Connor, Rally © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 15
- 16. Two Sizes ofProduct Owner • “small p” product owner – Focus on iterations (up through releases) – User story elaboration, backlog management – Available to dev team hour by hour – Customer showcase (rather than primary market research) – Internal recruit, often limited product management experience • “Big P” Product Owner, aka Chief Product Owner – Strategic view of customers, profitability, markets – Sets broad direction, owns resource allocation – Deep experience with customer segments • In my experience, “Big P” Product Owners call themselves: – VP/GM of Business Unit – VP Product Management – VP Engineering © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 16
- 17. PO/PM Organizational Map GM - VP PM - VP Eng/CTO Product Management Organization product owners more market-focused more technical © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 17
- 18. “small p” productowner Executives customer information, priorities, requirements, roadmaps, personas, user stories… product owner Marketing/Sales Development Customers software © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 18
- 19. Adapted Pragmatic Marketing®Framework Business Marketing Positioning Plan Plan Market Market Buying Customer Pricing Problems Definition Process Acquisition Win/Loss Distribution Buy, Build Buyer Customer Analysis Strategy or Partner Personas Retention Distinctive Product Product User Program Competence Portfolio Profitability Personas Effectiveness Market Strategy Business Planning Programs Readiness Support lo g, Competitive Product Innovation ack w Require bments ork Launch Sales Presentations Landscape Roadmap ep t Plan Process & Demos acc , Technology Use s rie Thought “Special” sto R Collateral Assessment NF Scenarios Leadership Calls Statusn/up Lead Sales Event dow Dashboard Generation Tools Support product owner b urn Processives t Referrals & Channel Channel pe c tros improvement re References Training Support Teamm a l- t e alneedss k tas © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 19
- 20. Much More toDo • IMO, Product Owner role adds 40-60% more work for a traditional product manager • PM is like to be overcommitted already – Too many constituents, queues, roles – Heavily time-sliced – PM capacity planning is a challenge • Natural for PMs to ignore how stretched they are • Agile highlights/worsens existing problem © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 20
- 21. Product Manager FailureModes Solo Product Manager fails the agile team if… • Part-timer, not fully engaged in team • Lack of detail on stories, acceptance tests • Stale items in backlog • Handwaving and bluster • Best of intentions, but pulled in too many directions • “Build what I meant” © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 21
- 22. Product Owner FailureModes Solo Product Owner fails the market if… • Weak on actual economic value: pricing, packaging, upgrade barriers, professional services, discounting, competitive dynamics • Disconnected from cross-functional teams that turn software into products (Marketing, Sales, Support…) • Trading off company-wide product strategy in favor of product-level features • Substituting showcases for broad market input © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 22
- 23. Scalable PM/PO Models Peopleand organizations matter. Consider: 1. Small product, co-located team – Agile product manager is the product owner 1. Complex product – PM covers strategic/outbound, PO (TPM) for inbound – Report up through same PM management chain 1. Distributed teams – One or more PMs at main Eng location, heavy travel schedule – Every remote team has a PO (or PM) – Frequent, intense collaboration among all PMs/POs 1. Pool of PM/PO talent with strategic leadership – Larger departments, enough resources to allocate – Pair up, mix and match, share, segment, be creative © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 23
- 24. Recapping My Biases •Titles don’t matter, but activities and roles do • A seasoned Agile Product Manager can also be a Product Owner – Cover both roles for one moderately complex product – Heroically for two products? • A Seasoned Product Owner can rarely also be a Product Manager – Outbound coordination and Sales/Marketing/Field role don’t fit into schedule or expertise • Product Management and Engineering have a historically complicated relationship © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 24
- 25. Take-Aways • PM/PO: Oneof the reasons Agile delivers better software • Activities and roles matter more than titles… • Product Manager POV: Agile makes PM job bigger – Market demands and first-hand interactions don’t go away – Challenging for one PM to cover both roles • Product Owner POV: customers are the market – Need deep and complex market inputs to represent users/customers/markets – Must partner with PMs or grow into full PM role • Emerging staffing and training problem • Think about skills mix, R&D geo-distribution © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 25
- 26. The Agile ProductManager / Product Owner Dilemma Rich Mironov, CMO, Enthiosys rmironov@enthiosys.com © 2009, Enthiosys Inc. All rights reserved. www.enthiosys.com or 650.528.4000 26
Editor's Notes
- #2 Page Contents © Enthiosys, 2009.
- #4 Specifically talking about software, but in the broader context. We see all kinds of companies shipping products/services for revenue that include software, bundle software, depend on SaaS, etc. Let’s assume for now that almost all products are software, depend on software, or build in software.
- #7 So place to start is the basics of what a product manager does, then compare it to a product owner. We’re about two years behind. Dev doesn’t understand PM, and went ahead without us. In some ways, takes us back 25 years to the evolution of software product management
- #8 Emphasize three audiences, three languages, three challenges. Rest of talk is broken up into three sections, one each for customers, executives and development.
- #11 Pragmatic has done a great job of identifying what needs to happen. If you expect to make money on a product or service, these must get done by someone. Lots of ways to carve this if resources allow more than one person, after we acknowledge the necessity. (if this is new to you, lots of material on the prag site.)
- #12 For instance, “triad” configuration often recommended by Steve Johnson. Note that entire grid is covered. Or split left (PM) and right (PMM).
- #13 We know that we have impossible jobs.
- #14 See http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/39-glossary-of-scrum-terms#1122 From CSM class materials. See http://www.controlchaos.com/certification/cspo.php CSPO: certified scrum product owner. 1-2 days classes, e.g. from Mike Cohn
- #16 www.enthiosys.com What does a typical 2-week iteration look like? • A living backlog of prioritized work to be done • A brief planning session in which the backlog items for the sprint will be defined: Team commits to work to be completed, identify tasks (and hours associated), collectively commits to getting it done during course of iteration • A brief daily meeting or scrum , at which progress is explained, upcoming work is described and impediments are raised: • 1.What have you done since the last scrum meeting? 2.What has impeded your work? 3.What do you plan on doing between now and the next scrum meeting? Review with Product Owner to review and accept/reject work Insert example of agenda . . . Insert example of retrospectives Iterations should not be longer than 4 weeks . . . .
- #17 Often PO is program manager, requirements analyst, user representative, business analysts… recruited into position without training or any PM experience Certainly, there are executives who would agree that they act as big product owners – but when you check their business cards you see titles like “Senior Product Manager” and “VP Product Management” and “COO, Network Security Products.” They don’t self-identify as product owners.
- #20 Plus team-related activities that were not part of traditional PM role: Process improvement and retrospectives Pitching in on broad team tasks including estimation, acceptance testing
- #27 Page Contents © Enthiosys, 2009.