This document discusses the roles of product manager and product owner in agile new product development. It argues that having a single person try to fulfill both roles can undermine the benefits of each. The product manager focuses on external stakeholders and the big picture, while the product owner is internally focused on the development team and details. Having separate individuals for each role enables both strategic vision and agile execution.

1. Agile New Product Development:
Whose Throat Should You Choke?"
#SVPCamp"
©2012 Rally Software Development

2. Your Speaker"
• Catherine Connor
– Rally Software
– Boulder, CO
– catherine@rallydev.com
• Roles
– Product Manager at Rally Software
– Product Owner at Rally Software
– Product Owner at Borland
– Requirements Evangelist at IBM Rational (RequisitePro)
– Sales Engineer at Rational
• Passion
– Providing customers with real solutions
– Helping product managers adopt Agile principles
– “How product management must change to enable the agile enterprise”

3. The Five Levels of Product Development"
" Product Vision drives Roadmap! Vision
"
" Roadmap sets Release dates and features"
" Release plan sets Iteration stories" Release 1 Release 2 Release 3
"
" Iteration plan locks
Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Sprint 4
development tasks"
" Daily stand-ups Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task n
share task status &
Individual daily workplan
remaining work"
Individual daily workplan What’s left
to do?

4. Product Owner Role"

5. Product Owner Cadence"
1 2 3 4 5
Stand-up Stand-up Stand-up Stand-up Stand-up
Identify features for next
Iteration Planning: Stories iteration Requirements meetings Requirements meetings
Conceptual model/arch -
Iteration Planning: Tasks future iterations
Monitor progress, accept Monitor progress, accept Monitor progress, accept Monitor progress, accept
Assist with design stories stories stories stories
Assist with acceptance tests Assist with acceptance tests Assist with acceptance tests Assist with acceptance tests Assist with acceptance tests
Update current reqs/stories Update current reqs/stories Update current reqs/stories Update current reqs/stories Update current reqs/stories
6 7 8 9 10
Stand-up Stand-up Stand-up Stand-up Stand-up
New stories, reqs for next GUI prototypes for next Get gross-level estimates
iteration iteration Help write tests next iteration
Monitor progress, accept Monitor progress, accept Monitor progress, accept Monitor progress, accept Updates to reqs, rankings
stories stories stories stories based on demo.
Assist with acceptance tests Assist with acceptance tests Assist with acceptance tests Assist with acceptance tests Demo/Review
Update reqs/stories Update reqs/stories Update reqs/stories Update reqs/stories Retrospective
Activity Legend
Team
Future Iteration
Current Iteration
Past Iteration

6. New Product Development"
Product ! Product !
Manager! Owner!
Building the RIGHT thing and building it RIGHT!

7. Covering Strategy & Execution"
S Investment
Categories
T
5" 30"
R
A
T
“Initiatives” $! F
25"
E 40"
E
E
G D
Y
“Features” $" B
E
A
X C
E K
C
U User Story
T! Hierarchy
I
O
N! Tasks

8. Product Manager Role"
The Product Manager the glue between strategy and execution"
“Building the Right Thing”!
" Product vision and roadmap "
" Customer visits"
" Market trends"
" Competitive intel"
" Customer development / Lean Startup"
" Business cases"
" Build, buy, partner decisions"
" Define features for target market"
" Product “face” to execs, sales, marketing, industry analysts"
" Pricing and packaging "
" Sales and channel enablement"
" Support sales customer calls"
" Create sales tools (demo script, FAQ, ..)"
"

9. Product Owner Role"
The Product Owner is formally part of the development team"
"
" Available to the team" “Building it Right”!
" Daily involvement with team (“daily standups”)"
" Represents the “voice of the customer” to the team"
" Attend engineering meetings (retrospectives, planning,..)"
" Writes user stories (with acceptance criteria)"
" Prioritize user stories "
" Schedule user stories to deliver features"
" Accept user stories"
" Triage defects"
" Performs frequent user validations (“sprint demos”)"

10. Finding the Right Pair"
" Product Manager: external to the Team"
" Product Owner: internal to the Team"
" Obsessive collaboration"

11. Critical Product Manager Skills"
" Available to sales & customers"
" Good communication skills with execs, sales &
customers"
" Good presentation skills"
" “Business” mentality"
" “Big picture”"
" Chunk initiatives into features"
" Focus on customer value"
" Make decisions"
" Delay decisions"

12. Critical Product Owner Skills"
" Must be physically present with the Dev team"
" Good communication skills with developers"
" “Tester” mentality (acceptance criteria)"
" Detail-oriented"
" Timeliness at validating completed stories"
" Empathize with customer needs"
" Chunk features into stories"
"
" Focus on customer value"
" Make decisions"
" Delay decisions"

13. Whose Throat to Choke?"

14. Choke the PM Throat"
" Product misses the mark in target market"
" Product is too expensive to sell"
" Product has no differentiating features"
" Features provide limited value"

15. Choke the PO Throat"
" Poor product usability"
" Buggy product"
" Constant delays in feature delivery"
" Team making many assumptions"

16. Avoid the Pitfall"

17. Asking One Person to Do It All"
Product Manager ! Product Owner!
Availability: to non-Dev stakeholders (sales, Availability: to the team"
customers, partners, execs)" Must be physically present with the Dev Team"
Communication outside the Dev team" Communication inside the Dev Team"
Focus: yearly, quarterly, monthly" Focus: monthly, weekly, daily"
Track market and technology trends" Feature-level competitive research"
Promote the “product” internally and externally" Represent “voice of customer” to Dev Team"
Identify market needs & events" Identify blocking issues"
Define pricing and packaging" Coordinates engineering documentation"
Sales and channel enablement" Demos sprint progress"
Define product vision" Prioritize weekly backlog"
Define product roadmap" Attend iteration planning"
Identify features & benefits" Write stories (with acceptance criteria)"
Accept stories"

18. With Only One Person"
" Focus on Product Owner role"
– Impact: forego differentiating features"
" Focus on Product Manager role"
– Impact: undermining agile development "

19. More on the PO/PM Topic…"
" Google “Product Manager vs. Product Owner”"
" “How Product Management must change to
enable the agile enterprise” – Catherine Connor"
" Dean Leffingwell’s
Agile Software Requirements"
" Rich Mironov’s
Agile Product Manager Dilemma"

20. Thank You"
©2012 Rally Software Development