1. Provocation to the PO
challenge
Marko Taipale
for Agile Coaching and Consulting Circle

2. Who is the PO?

3. Emptying the table
• “PO is not a role, nor a function but a
problem” - a coach
• Every method has a “trash bin” - in Scrum
it is the PO
• No Scrum Master is able to coach the PO

4. Some of the challenges
• Single PO model does not work => too
much to handle, information bottleneck
• PO group is ambigious (is it a group of POs
or a group of PO’s delegates?) -> Orgs have
plenty of these - and they do not work
• What happens in between the Customer -
Vision or Vision - Product Backlog?

5. We marginalize the Biz
• Cost of Delay / ROI calculus
• Business Model Generation
• Customer Development
• Problem/Solution and Product/Market fit
• Difference in customer driven and spec
driven?

6. PO “tools”
• Story maps - matter of workshopping once
you know what, how and why
• Product backlog - matter of typing once
you know what, how and why
• User stories - temporary/stored? Contains
“how” or not? Not enough?
• Our tools are not covering the upstream

7. We emphasize learning
• ... but promote single point of contact to
customer?
• ... but promote proxy or hearsay to the real
information?
• ... rely on product vision (which is a guess?)

8. Product vision is a guess
• Steve Blank: “Vision = guess. There are no
facts inside your building, only assumptions”
• Agile coach: “PO should have the product
vision and sit next to the team”

9. Questions
• Is P/L and BL management supposed to be
“single guy” - impl. pattern contradicts
• PO group.. what is it for you?
• How about product champion (Chief
Engineer like, any experiences?)
• Are PMs really removed in agile orgs?
• Is PO just a repair kit that one should not
implement (unless he needs a firewall)?