If you are a Product Owner (PO), you are essentially the owner of the product and most POs I come across know what that entails. However, I also meet POs who determine during the Sprint which items from the Sprint Backlog the Development Team should work on, or what the solution should be, or even perform code reviews and evaluate work this way.
As Agile practitioners, we know the importance of being adaptable and embracing change. Yet, we’re all creatures of habit, and breaking free from our habitual behaviours can be challenging. While habits can provide comfort and predictability, they can also hinder our growth and limit our ability to embrace Agile principles.
Many people choose to do things efficiently, because they probably assume that it is the best way to be successful and that it is the best way to get the highest value with the least amount of effort. But substituting efficiency for effectiveness makes things worse instead of better. The fact is that efficiency and effectiveness are two different things.
The Project Mindset approach, in which success is defined upfront based on Scope, Time and Budget, will (based on experiences) lead to less business involvement and more task management.
The Product Mindset approach, in which success is continuously driven by business metrics like User adaption/retention, revenue cost saving per feature, will (based on experiences) lead to less waste, more creativity and more releases.
The future is unknown and although some people claim to be able to predict the future, most people can't. But to look a little ahead, into the future, to have a sense of when certain items on the Product Backlog are finished, predictability would be very useful. Although we can't be completely predictable, it is helpful if we are a little more predictable than we are now. And therefore we need some measurement results from the near past.
The days are getting shorter and colder. Summer is over and winter is coming. Some people are already thinking about the holidays and the preparations for it. Soon children will have their Christmas wish list ready. The wish lists my children created were always a combination of text and pictures; every item on the list contained a name, a picture, information where to buy it and how much it costs....
Suppose you want to have a book written. You are looking for a good author and you have a lot of conversations with him about the subject, so that he gets a good idea of what should and what should not be in the book. As soon as the author has enough information, he goes to work and after a year and a half the book is finished. The writer gives you the book and you start reading and then...
... At school, the students work on the assignments together in groups, physically sitting together. But now they all stay at home, it is not possible to sit physically together. Nevertheless the situation, they still collaborate intensively and when I saw how they do that, I thought to myself "These kids show us, adults, how it's being done". How do they act?
Are you a Business Analyst and do you currently fulfil the role of the Product Owner? Or otherwise the Product Owner may have delegated some tasks to you, for lack of time to deal with those themselves. How well does that work for you? Can you manage it? Do you know the difference between these two roles and what additional tasks and responsibilities you have been given when adopting the role of the Product Owner?
Als je Product Owner (PO) bent, ben je feitelijk eigenaar van het product en de meeste PO's die ik tegenkom weten wel wat dat inhoudt. Maar ik ontmoet ook PO's die tijdens de Sprint bepalen aan welk item van de Sprint Backlog het Ontwikkelteam moet werken, of die bepalen wat de oplossing moet zijn, of zelfs code reviews uitvoeren en zo het werk beoordelen. Dergelijke Product Owners bedoelen het ongetwijfeld heel goed...
Recently I ran into a beautiful piece of text, written by Rachel Naomi Remin. In this text I read the following phrase:
"Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers, but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company"
To me that is what life is all about, living with unanswerable questions...
Ben jij Business Analist en vervul je momenteel de rol van product owner? Of misschien heeft de product owner veel taken aan jou gedelegeerd, omdat hij er zelf geen tijd voor heeft. Hoe goed gaat je dat af?
Als we de vergelijking product owner vs business analist maken, weet jij dan welke extra taken en verantwoordelijkheden je erbij hebt gekregen?
In organizations in which agile transitions take place, the ancient English proverb Blood is thicker than water is frequently appropriate. It is decided to adopt agile working, there is talk of Scrum, self-organizing teams, Sprints, standing meetings, sticky notes on the wall, etc. etc. Everybody has to change with the times, the whole organization has to change. But when push comes to shove people easily return to old habits, by re-instating the Command and Control method, with a dent in the belief in self-organization as a result.
December is met Sinterklaas en Kerstmis voor velen de maand van cadeautjes. En daar hoort natuurlijk een verlanglijstje bij. Veel kinderen stoppen hun lijstje al half november in hun schoen, zodra de Sint in het land is. En vaak zetten ze daarop ook wat ze het belangrijkste vinden. De laatste jaren bestonden de verlanglijstjes van mijn kinderen voornamelijk uit aan elkaar geplakte knipsels, waardoor er een verlanglijstje ontstond met tekst en foto"s van hetgeen ze wilde hebben.
Agile is hot! Veel organisaties geven aan agile te willen werken en schakelen agile coaches en Scrum Masters in om hen daarbij te helpen. Er zijn organisaties die het agile werken (meestal Scrum) willen invoeren, omdat ze agile beschouwen als een Silver Bullet die de organisatie efficiënter en winstgevender zal maken. Bij hen merken we vaak dat het beeld wat men van agile heeft beperkt is gebleven tot een groep software ontwikkelaars die elke ochtend een kwartier bij een whiteboard vol met plakbriefjes staat...
