Agile2015 Talk: Product Owner Team – Why? 

Agile2015 is just a week away. I will be presenting my talk on Product Owner Teams: Leading Agile Program Management and want to share some thoughts ahead of time on the problem we are solving with the PO Team.

I summarize the Goals in a couple of bullet points:

• Provide Agile Teams with the support, guidance and coaching they need to get the job done
• Improve and accelerate your product delivery by improving your Agile Transformation

I focus the talk on four key Objectives:

• Provide clarity through a well defined feature backlog
• Hold Agile Teams accountable for making and meeting commitments
• Demonstrate measurable progress by facilitating the demonstration of integrated features
• Provide timely information to Portfolio Management for investment decisions

Here’s more detail from the abstract for my talk:

“Building a clear and effective product backlog to deliver on strategic initiatives in an enterprise attempting agile can be difficult. Now add the competing needs of other work with various stakeholders across the organization. And that’s not the hardest part. The real challenge is prioritizing and coordinating considering risks, technical viability and planning dependencies.

The Product Owner Team wrestles with these organizational challenges to provide Agile Teams with the support they need to get the job done. This team ensures the work is strategically aligned and prioritized with Portfolio Management. Only then can the team establish, maintain and coordinate a clear feature backlog for Agile Teams in a complex environment.

The Product Owner Team will improve and accelerate an organization’s agile transformation. This talk presents a proven framework for leading Agile Program Management including the roles, artifacts and activities for an effective Product Owner Team. Additionally, this talk introduces an Agile Program Management starter kit so participants can get started quickly in their own organization.”

The work of the PO Team is challenging. It requires motivated individuals with a clear plan. I hope to help by providing a starting place for the plan.

Are you attending Agile2015? If so, drop me a note and let’s chat.

Update: below are my slides from the talk – enjoy.