20 Tips for Product Owners„2014 New Year‘s Edition“

Björn Schotte // @BjoernSchotte // bjoern.schotte@mayflower.deMAYFLOWER GmbH http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.de

Have a compelling Agile Product

VisionLink: http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/product-vision/the-product-vision-board/

Define your Personas in a

„good enough“ wayLink: http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-innovation/persona-template-for-agile-product-

management/

Use Story Mappingfor visualizing and defining Most

Important Stories

Link: http://leanagilechange.com/leanagilewiki/index.php?title=Story_Mapping

Learn to say„NO“

Invest in Continuous Delivery

(and release often)

Link: http://puppetlabs.com/blog/continuous-delivery-vs-continuous-deployment-whats-diff

Build KANO user surveys

right into the software

Link: http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2013/07/using-the-kano-model-to-prioritize-product-development/

Test the business value of a story by

hypotheses(and throw them away if they don‘t succeed)

Use Lean Startup philosophy

even if you‘re Corporate

Link: http://theleanstartup.com/

Regularly predict release with

Product Burndown Chart

Link: http://www.sw-engineering-candies.com/blog-1/howtouseproduct-burndown-chartsandsprint-burndown-chartsnotonlyinscrumprojects

Never ever useVelocity as a KPI for

rewarding/punishing the team

Trust the team(and give them slack time to create

new things)

Groom the backlog with the team

(at least weekly)

Link: http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/backlog-grooming.html

The higher the quality of a User Story, the

better the estimation(but don‘t over-spec!)

Integrate UX/Design

the Agile Way

Commit yourself to retrospectives

with the teamLink: http://pragprog.com/book/dlret/agile-retrospectives

Let the team speak with customers

directly(less bugs in the software, higher quality)

Use Personal Kanban to organize yourself

(or try GTD)

Link: http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/

use NPS to get regular feedback from

stakeholders and customers

(and care for the passives and promoters)

Link: http://www.netpromotersystem.com/book/index.aspx

Invest in removing technical debt

(better quality, less bugs in the future)

Throw a partyfor your team!

Have suggestions?

@BjoernSchotte