The Product Owner in Scrum

What is the role of the Product Owner in Scrum? 

The product owner’s responsibility is to ensure that the product is developed and delivered in a manner that maximises the paying owner’s return on investment.  In Scrum, what this means is that the product owner must identify for the Team those product features that deliver the highest business value for money amongs the outstanding product features not yet delirvered.

There is the assumption that there will never be enough money to build every desired feature.  Therefore, the features need to be prioritised.

The Product Owner does not dictate to the Team the specific set of features they need to build in a Sprint.  

Specifically, the Product Owner does not tell the Team how many features they ought to build during a certain Sprint – that decision belongs to the Team alone.  The Product Owner’s main role is to inform the Team of the priorities, so that they don’t proceed to deliver lower value features over high value ones.  There can be exceptions - for example a lower value feature may be included in the Sprint over a higher value one because the higher value one is too big to be added to the current Sprint, while the lower values one is small enough to be added.

It is possible that the product owner is the customer, but he or she must never be the Scrum Master.

The Systems Engineer Genie

A whimsical look at what it could be like if the genie has been trained as a Systems Engineer.

A man walks along the beach and comes across a magic lamp.  He rubs the lamp, and out comes a Genie.

“Greetings, Master, I am a Genie from INCOSE.  Your wish is my command.” says the Genie.

Excited, the man says: “I want a million dollars!” and holds out his hands, anticipating the goods.

But nothing happens.

The man demands: “Where’s my million dollars?”

Genie: “I am an SE Genie. That’s not how we work.  First, I have to understand what it is you want to achieve, and help you come up with the best solution.  Master, why do you need a million dollars?” 

Man: “What ?!? Ok I want a million dollars so I can quit my job not have to work anymore!  Give me my money!”

Genie: “Ok, so you’re not happy with your job.  We should look at the different possible solutions to that problem and not jump to conclusion about the solution.  For example, perhaps you can move to a different job?  I can grant you a new job.  Or how about I make it so that you enjoy your current job.  Say, if we make you the boss?”

Man: No, no, no!  I want a million dollars so I can enjoy myself.  So I can do what I want, like travel, eat good food and drink great wine.   I don’t want to work anymore.

Genie:  Ah I see.  Now, instead of a million dollars, what about a lifetime free air travel?  And lifetime free meal vouchers.

Man: No, I want money!

Genie: OK, I guess we have settled on the concept of operations. You get money, and spend it on whatever you like.  Now, let’s get the requirements right.  Are you talking about Australian dollars, US dollars, Brunei dollars, Hong Kong dollars?

Man: “US dollars! A million US dollars”

Genie: Great, How do you want to receive it? In cash? In coins? Deposited to your bank account? A lump sum? An annuity?

Man: “What?”

Genie: How does this requirement sound:  “The genie shall arrange to deposit a million US dollars into the following bank account XXX-XXXX no later than 5 business days from today.”

Man: Great! Let’s do it.

Genie: We’ll also need to agree on how you will VERIFY that you have received the million dollars.

Man: “What?”

Genie: Verification, how will you check that I have fulfilled your wish?

Man: Ok!  Uh… I will check my bank statement, and if I see a million dollars, then we’re fine.  I will also sign a document saying: WISH GRANTED.

Genie: Then we have to integrate the money into your life.  How will you explain this to the tax authorities?  Do you have any outstanding debt?  Should the money be placed under your name or to a legal entity?

Man: Forget about those things and just give me my damn million dollars!

Genie: We also need to think about the effectiveness of this proposed solution.  Like, will 1 million dollars be as as 2 million dollars?

Man: Just give me 100 million dollars !

Genie: Granted!

And the man got his 100 million dollars and got investigated by the tax authorities and his money got frozen by the anti-money laundering regulatory commission and the man spent the rest of his life paying legal defense bills, all because he ignored the sensible analysis required by the SE Genie.

The Likelihood of an Event

The biggest constraint in risk management, indeed the very reason for the existence of the discipline, is our inability to foresee what will happen next. 

In most cases where people have to manage the risk of an event, it is very common to rely on subjective estimates of the likelihood that the event will happen. It may be easy to deliver criticism of this approach, but alternative options are limited.  

An improvement over such a simplistic 'gut feel' approach is to incorporate the phenomenon that events of a smaller scale occur at a higher frequency than similar events of bigger scale.  Earthquakes of low magnitude occur very frequently. Killer earthquakes occur far less frequently. 

The relationship of the frequency between the two types of events is described a the Power Law Distribution.  If we keep track of smaller scale events, we will be able to predict with a certain degree of confidence the frequency of the bigger scale events.

***