Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell

I think it's high time that we turned the spotlight on the Product Owner.

If you Google for 'Product Ownership', the first result is a rather nice definition:

The Product Owner (PO) is the member of the team
responsible for defining Stories and prioritizing
the Team Backlog so as to streamline the execution
of program priorities, while maintaining conceptual
and technical integrity of the Features or components
the team is responsible for.

I don't have a problem with any of that, other than it's a bit... dry.

Scrolling down, there are some image results.

(If you're a product owner yourself, I'm sure you'd approve of this one)

But it's this one that I've brought you to see.

You may recognise the style: it was drawn by Henrik Kniberg - the same guy that drew the Minimum Viable Product illustration that we featured in a previous episode.

If a click through to the page, it's a video. And believe me when I tell you that it's no ordinary video: it's as close as I think you can get to a perfect primer on Product Ownership

It covers a lot of ground, including:

• Vision...
• Stakeholders...
• User Stories
• Capacity
• Automated Testing / Continuous Integration
• WIP Limits
• Product Backlog
• The importance saying "No"
• Backlog Grooming
• Risk
• Customer Value / Knowledge Value
• Estimating / Forecasting
• Technical Debt
• and Multi-team Projects

Definitely worth 15 minutes of your time.

Do yourself a favour: grab a hot beverage and sit down and watch the video.

If you like the video, make sure to give Henrik a thumbs up, then come back here and let me know your thoughts.

That's it for this time. Join me next time for more Product Owner-related loveliness.