Deliver It Cast: Recent Episodes
Cory Bryan
Deliver It is a podcast for agile Product Owners. Hosted by Cory Bryan and guests bring their experience and ideas on how to improve the role and techniques they use to deliver value within an agile framework. The show brings together relevant news, discussion, around a central topic and your feedback in a fun and supportive way.
A common behavior that leads to agile team dysfunction is seeking credit. This takes away from the emphasis of teamwork and we should instead encourage people to focus on doing the right thing and telling the story of their work.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- Who gets the credit?
- If It’s Right, It’s Right For You
Thinking out loud can help to improve collaboration, transparency, and co-creation in teams. By making one's work and thoughts more visible, it can lead to interesting discussions, corrections, and ultimately better ideas that help customers win.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- Working Out Loud: The making of a movement | John Stepper | TEDxNavesink
- Teresa Torres: Critical Thinking for Product Teams
A quick grab bag of Q’s and A’s as I worked on some ideas for future shows.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
For product folks, how do you identify the core problem? How do you know when you've fixed enough small problems to start tackling the bigger picture? And do people who make things really love problems or is problem-solving just a necessary (and sometimes exhausting) part of the creative process?
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- TBM 212: A Problem vs. The Problem
- Q&A with Steve Johnson, VP of Products, Pragmatic Institute
- Product Manager aka Problem Manager
Understanding the reasons behind the needs of a story, a problem, or a question, helps you learn more about your customers and product. How can you find the deeper issues that exist, you can ask “So that”.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Exploring the idea of what it takes to change your mind. How I changed my mind recently, how you can, and help others change theirs.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- Changing for Good
- Talking to Humans
- The Mom Test
This episode talks about an idea that Product folks have some higher-level design goals when we are thinking about things. What are the 4 lenses or areas we are usually designing something for?
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- https://dontyellatme.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/efficient-vs-effective/
- Kent Beck - Explore, Expand, Extract
Back with a quick hit on why understanding your customers’ Order of Operations for their work is magical
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- TSSC - Meals per Hour
Taking this episode to stop and reflect on the current state of product owners, agility, and lots of other basic information. If you are just starting out, this is a great first episode. If not, it’s a good idea to review the basics and make sure you aren’t skipping anything. Also looking back on the last 50(ish) episodes and what main ideas came from each one.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- The Scrum Guide
- SeekTaiju Links for Product Owners
- The Beautiful Mess - The Basics
- Many More Much Smaller Steps
- Product Coffee - Escaping the Build Trap
Often times the lesson you need to learn is stuck in your head and only crystalizes when you’re ready. Such is the case for the notion of sharpening the saw that Bob Galen continually talks about. Now that I get it, I wanted to explore the idea more with him and get the background and tips about how to do that for PO’s.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- Bob Galen - https://rgalen.com/ - https://twitter.com/bobgalen - https://www.agile-moose.com/
- Sharpening the Saw in 2017
- 2019 & Beyond – Sharpening the saw
- 7 habits of highly effective agile transformation sharpen the saw
- Sharpen your knives
After hearing the word “finished” more and more over the last few weeks, I started to notice that it was bothering me. I wanted to explore why that was after looking over some notes and asking a better question. In product thinking terms, are we ever finished with something? Would it be such a bad thing if we never were finished? Experimented with a quick and simple way to think through that in this episode.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- The Myth of The Finished Product
- Software is never finished, only released
- Does the pursuit of ‘finished’ destroy efficiency?
What could you do to make yourself, a little more uncomfortable? In your work, practices, and thoughts even. In this episode, we will explore some ideas about why you should be uncomfortable, how to challenge yourself, and what benefits might be found outside your comfort zone.
Feedback:
Twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
- Ken Norton - Product Managers: Please Make Yourself Uncomfortable
- Positive Psychology - How to Leave Your Comfort Zone and Enter Your ‘Growth Zone’
- Michael Easter - The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self
- Carol Dweck - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
- Veritasium - The 4 things it takes to be an expert
- Dan Benoni & Louis Xavier - Growth.Design Case Studies
How do you know that something will work ahead of time? What problems will come up when a customer uses your product? When can you double down on something that works? A simple way to handle those questions is to keep your options open. Then when you get new info, you have the ability to react intelligently.
Feedback: twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support: Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Signal v Noise - Options, Not Roadmaps
The Deep Dish - 10 Principles of Optionality For an Uncertain World
Kent Beck - Decisions, Decisions or Why Baskets of Options Dominate
Johanna Rothman - Consider Product Options with Minimum Outcomes
Drunk Agile - Episode 48 Observations of Flow
Simon Wardley - Wardley Mapping quick intro
How to build your first Wardley Map with Miro
How many discussions, debates, or other conversations do we get stuck in over practices and tools? What would happen if instead, we focused on the principles that those things are supposed to enable for us? In this episode, a review of some principles from different disciplines and areas that we can use to guide us. Which do you use already?
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit - Mary and Tom Poppendieck
ModernAgileShow#26 | Interview with Mary and Tom Poppendieck
Jens-Fabian Goetzmann - Seven Product Management Principles
Mallory Kim - 12 Principles for better UX
How Lean and Agile Relate and How You Can Win by Using Both
https://www.hq-digital.com/blog/7-psychology-principles-to-influence-user-and-customer-behavior
20 Psychological Principles That Will Help Your Students Learn More Effectively
SAFe Lean-Agile Principles
YDS: What are the Principles of the Scrum Framework?
What Is Kanban? Explained for Beginners.
5 Principles Of Cooking That Will Give You A Solid Culinary Foundation
There seems to be something magical about the number 3. It appears to show up in many different places and in lots of useful ways. This episode examines a "Rule of 3" for the things we do in product, agile, and personal things. There are several other fields that have a similar structure, so why not for us as well?
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Jessica Dubin - 7 ways to use the Rule of Threes to build great products
Dawn Bauman - How to Use the ‘Rule of Three’ to Jazz Up Your Writing in 2022
Ameet Ranadive - The Rule of 3
Photutorial - What is Rule of Thirds?
Sandra Forgues - User Story Mapping: what it is, how it works
Tim Ottinger - Waste Snake
Ron Jeffries - Do you want crappy agile ( metrics, maybe we should just say no )
More Metrics! Which ones are the most important ones for people that are at the top levels of your company? What areas do they care about to decide if investing more is worth it? In this episode, Stephanie Tanzar talks about the 3 that are leading the way to better outcomes in product-led organizations, and why they are becoming more relevant to boardrooms and leaders.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast https://twitter.com/deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Stephanie Tanzar - Twitter @steffitanner LinkedIn
Pendo - Product Engagement Score (PES) Overview
Pendo - The journey to a better Product Engagement Score
Pendo - Glossary for Product Engagement Score (PES)
Gainsight - Product Metrics Your Board Members Care About
Echometer - 9 agile KPIs that executives should know
Gojko Adzic - Redefining software quality
Deliver It Cast 88 - Working Software
Lenny Rachitsky - Lenny's Podcast
Mike Cohn & Brian Milner - Agile Mentors Podcast
Ogilvy Consulting - NudgeStock 2022
Exploring an idea around the 3rd root cause of failures I've seen in working in a more agile way, incentives. Many times, if the behavior and reasons don't make sense to you, take a look at how the person is being rewarded, or the lack of rewards, and see if you can understand it better. This can also be the secret key to changing how people work, change their incentives. If you have seen examples of this working against you, or altering them to work for you send it in!
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
The Agile Angle - Agile Team Reward System
Shane Parrish - The Power of Incentives: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior
Mike Bedard - Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
Art Bryne - What Incentives and Bonus Programs Best Support Lean?
Marty Cagan and Jon Moore - Transformation Defined
Rich Mironov - Product Waste and the ROI of discovery
A reminder that the most important word for a Product Owner, is "No." There are so many different ways, places, and people that need to be told no that can really be difficult. What about if someone tells you no as well? Revisiting the idea of all the different times, reasons, and ideas that Product Owners can use to say no successfully with guest Jen Fields.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast @ gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Jen Fields - LinkedIn
Bob Galen - Moose Herd
Deliver It Cast - E7 Prepare to say no
Saeed Khan - How to say ‘No’ as a Product Manager
Adam S - The Art of Saying No as a Product Owner
Dawn Ulmer - 7 Reasons why we don't say no and how to fix them
Sara McCord - 4 Completely Inoffensive Ways to Say "No" at Work (Because "Yes" Isn't Always an Option)
Leo Babauta - The Gentle Art of Saying No for a Less Stressful Life
Chris Voss - Never split the Difference
John Cutler - Mandate Levels
Matt Barcomb - Who needs a Product Vision Anyway?
How often do Product Owners find themselves telling stories? Stories about our customers, teams, and problems faced by both. In this episode, I wanted to share some things I've been reading that help to understand how to listen, gather, and tell better stories. If you are interested in seeing how the best storytellers refine their craft and how PO's can learn from them, listen up.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Robert McKee Books:
Storynomics: Story Driven Marketing in the Post-Advertising World
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Michael Tucker - Lessons from the screenplay
Sritama Sarkar - Is it necessary for Product Managers to love their products?
Ant Murphy - Why Product Managers Don’t Need Domain Knowledge to be Effective
Sometimes you find a way to hack a problem so well, that it affects most other things you do as well. In this episode, I share a hack I tried out recently and changed my mindset about a lot of things, work-related and beyond. If you are struggling with planning, thinking, or executing something, try using a budget for it and see what happens.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Debbie Madden - Your Agile Project Needs a Budget, Not an Estimate
Ramsey Solutions - 15 Practical Budgeting Tips
Ami Vora - It’s not prioritization until it hurts
EP51 - Accounting for PO’s
EP55 - Time Management for POs
Jeff Gothelf - 7 Things I've learned from two years working from home
Bruce McCarthy - How to Ignore Customer Requests
What are some of the habits that product people have? After reading two books on habits recently, that thought kept coming up. This episode goes into the idea of Product Habits, those things that we do with our teams, customers, company, products, and ourselves. Andrew Stokzko joins the show to discuss his ideas and experience. Got a good or bad habit you want to share with us?
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Andrew Skotzko @askotzko
Make things that matter - Podcast
Andrew Skotzko - How to know if you’re interviewing at a product-led company
James Clear - Atomic Habits
BJ Fogg - Tiny Habits
Toby Sinclair - Tiny Habits vs Atomic Habits, Which should you read?
Sachin Rekkhi - Atomic Habits for Product Managers
Rich Mironov - Prioritization is a Political Problem as Much as an Analytical Problem
There are lots of questions about certification and training for Product Owners. In this episode, we talk to scrum trainers Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley to understand what PO's should know before they attend any training. If you are looking to take a class or get your certification, what should you read, watch, and do ahead of the class. We also discuss some of the tougher aspects of scrum that people need help with.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Support the show - Buy me a Coffee
Links:
Twitter - Ryan Ripley Todd Miller
Agile for Humans - Community
PSM II: A Trainer's Perspective - Article
Evidence-Based Management - Free EMB Training Course
Scrum.org - Product Owner Learning Path
Deliver It [102] - Fixing your scrum
Deliver It [46] - Metrics Madness
More and more places seem to want to run some form of "Hybrid" model of agile and waterfall together. What does that look like in practice and how can a Product Owner survive? Is it possible to make this work, or should you abandon all hope if you start hearing this word a lot? In this episode, you'll learn what most places mean by hybrid and some tips on how to do something useful to deliver value.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Support:
Product Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Buy me a Coffee
Links:
John Cutler - Journey to Product Teams (Infographic)
Case Study: How To Eliminate Flaws Of Waterfall And Agile Development Processes Using A Hybrid Model
Matt Wallart - Start at the end - How to build products that create change
Katelyn Burgoin - The trigger technique
Product Owners frequently encounter Agile Coaches in our day-to-day work and some of their tools and techniques can be valuable to us. In this episode, Bob Galen joins the show to chat about what ideas PO's can adapt, borrow, or use that coaches do exceptionally well that can help us to improve our work. If you worked with a coach and carried forward something they did that was useful, tell us about it! Thank you listeners for a great season 7!
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Work Blog - http://seektaiju.com/blog.html
Personal Blog - https://corybryan.substack.com/
Support the show - Buy me a Coffee
https://rgalen.com/ - https://www.agile-moose.com/blog - Twitter@Bobgalen
https://www.zenergytechnologies.com/
Qualities of Great Agile Coaches
Niall McShane - Three tensions agile coaches learn to navigate
BeLiminal - Agile Coaching Growth Wheel Guidance
Mishkin Berteig - Powerful Questions for Agile Coaches
Giff Constable - 10 Lessons on Making Software
Katelyn Bourgoin - Trigger Technique
No matter what method, framework, or practice you are using as a Product Nerd to break down your work, it all comes back to "what" and "how". At least that is what Alyssa Knoll's "Theory of Everything" says and for this episode, she joins the show to discuss the idea, the post she wrote detailing it, and some things that she's learned since then. What way have you seen this theory put into practice?
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Alyssa Knoll - https://productnerdsonly.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssa-knoll/ - https://mixir.io
“What” and “How”: The Theory of Everything
Jeff Gothelf - Output, Outcomes, Impact and KPIs
Marty Cagan - Team Objectives – Empowerment
Spine Model - Intro
Ron Jefferies - A Satirical Website Raises Hackles
David Pereira - 7 Characteristics of Weak Product Management
All too often what some PO's and teams call an "Iteration", is anything but. Seeing that far too often, this episode explores some of the reasons why and ways to iterate with our teams, products, practices, and selves. Got any tips or tricks to make sure that you are iterating towards success?
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
SmartSheet - The Power of Iterative Design and Process
Jeff Patton - Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know How to Get It
Troubleshooting Agile Podcast - https://agileconversations.com/troubleshooting-agile-podcast/
Jens-Fabian Goetzmann - The Iteration Imperative
Rich Mironov - Selling Problems (and Then Solutions) Instead of Philosophy
Jens-Fabian Goetzmann - Product Teardowns at Yammer
The language that Product Owners use every day plays a big role in how successful our products, teams, and customers will be, not to mention, ourselves. How do we change that language? In his wonderful books, David Marquet explores how he successfully used "Intent" as the driver of change on his submarine and when working in other areas as well. In this episode, we take a look at some of the great advice from his books and leadership nudges to move more towards speaking with intent.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Daivd Marquet - @ldavidmarquet on twitter - https://intentbasedleadership.com/
Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders
Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say - and What You Don't
Leadership Nudges - YouTube
Ken Sandy - Something Is Not Right in Modern Product Management
Simon Kneafsey - The 2 Best Product Owner I Ever Worked With – The Empowered Product Owner
Product owners see and deal with a lot of waste. It's almost everywhere. In our products, our process, our teams, our daily lives. The struggle is not only in how to eliminate or at least reduce the waste, it's how to get others to know and look for the waste as well. In this episode we will look at what are the 8 wastes from a Lean perspective and what can you do about them. Check out some of the great materials in the links for ways to learn to see the waste and why seeing it is so important.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Paul Akers - 2 sec lean
Kent Beck - XP Explained
Fluid UI - 21 perfect examples of waste in Lean Product Development
Learnovative - How to manage the 7 wastes if agile software development
Alyssa Knoll - The power of good enough
Scrum Alliance - In search of the perfect product owner
Have you ever been told you're a perfectionist? Is that really common for Product Owners? Is perfection even possible? In this episode, Geoff Watts joins the show to talk about how this is a trait that can sometimes trap us in our work and with our teams. Also, we discuss some areas where it might be a good thing and how POs can leverage it for a benefit.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Geoff Watts - @geoffcwatts on twitter - https://www.inspectandadapt.com/
Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan - The Coach’s Casebook
Sean Durham - Why Your Progress is more Important than Perfection
Kevin Wang - The Product Manager’s Guide to Combating Perfectionism
Elizabeth Scott - Perfectionist Traits: Do These Sound Familiar?
Julian Treasure - How to speak so that people want to listen
John Cutler - The Form That Stole 20,531,250 Seconds
James Hoffman - Understanding The AeroPress (Episode #2) with Triangle Test
Society of Sensory Professionals - Triangle Test
The simple questions are usually the best. In this episode, I share a question ( or series of questions ) that has been driving a lot of my conversations lately to understand some of the fundamental thinking in companies. Sometimes this reveals things that aren't great and can give a direction for PO's to head in to make things better.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Paul Akers - Banish Sloppiness
Justin Pot - ‘I don’t know’ is the best phrase for your career
Marty Cagan - The Best vs. The Rest
Forbes - Why Every Company Is A Technology Company
What is it about measurements that cause so much grief? There's a great number of things that we should be measuring in our product, our teams, and our companies that would benefit us to look at. Product Owners need to be in a position to help see, understand, and explain all the different things that are being measured. If important things are not being measured, find some way to start.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Douglass Hubbard - How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business
Freakonomics - Will Work-from-Home Work Forever? (Ep. 464)
A Solution to Podcast Note-Taking? Look to the Airr App
David Pereira - Agile manifesto is long gone! We need a product manifesto!
Zach Bonaker - Truth, Lies, and Agile
A common anti-pattern is when Product Owners are too focused on doing things only in the current iteration. Maarten Dalmijn has written a lot about teams and PO's that find themselves stuck in their sprint bubble and joins this episode to discuss some signs that you're stuck, some ideas to break out, and ways to make sure sure you don't find yourself there again.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Maarten Dalmijn - @mdalmijn on twitter - https://mdalmijn.com/
14 Signs you’re working in a Scrum Feature Factory
Product Owners are great when their team doesn’t need them
How to escape your Scrum prison
Bill Skeet - If you Love Design, it’s Time to Stop Liking it
Kristen Berman - 4 ways a Behavioral Scientist can help PMs
In this episode, you can hear a chat with Vitalik Demin the Chief of Product at Gossip, a voice-based social network app about how he became involved in the startup and how they are approaching all things product there. It's a great chance to hear how small start-ups get their initial product experiments and learnings done quickly, and what issues life throws at you as you try and get your product delivered to customers.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Vitalik Demin - @VitalikGDemin on twitter - "What’s The Gossip App and Why I Love Building and Using It"
Gossip App - https://thegossip.app/
First Round - Don’t Serve Burnt Pizza (And Other Lessons in Building Minimum Lovable Products)
Marty Cagan - The CSPO Pathology
Adam Bennett - Effective steps you can take to create a winning product strategy
Product Owners will have the most success working with well-formed and happy teams. Creating those teams requires a lot of people working together and figuring out how best to enable them to succeed. Teams and the thinking around them have evolved in the last few years so in this episode there's some new information, some common challenges, and suggestions for how to look at teams now.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Team Topologies - https://teamtopologies.com/
GitLab - Embracing asynchronous communication
FASTAgile - https://www.fastagile.io/method
Bob Galen - Elastic Teams
Melissa Perry - Product Thinking podcast with Jeff Patton
Isaac Sacolick - 5 Powerful Digital Transformation Storytelling tips
Occasionally as a Product Owner, we'll get stuck trying to decide something. How to write a story, come up with a goal, or see when things need to happen. We are stuck trying to look forward into an unknown future. One way to change the outlook on something is to reverse it and start at the end. The reasons why you might want to do that and what you might want to do it on, are covered in this episode.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Dan Charnas - Work Clean
Jacob Thomas - Begin With the End In Mind: The “What,” “Why,” and “How” of This Powerful Philosophy
Shreyas Doshi - Pre-Mortem Meeting
Ibrahim Bashir - Onboarding Artifacts
Rob Fitzpatrick - The Mom Test
So often the amount of success that Product Owners will have is dependent upon the organization they work in. How they are built, what they value, how they lead and treat their teams and individuals. In this episode, the amazing author of "Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Result" Marty Cagan joins the show to discuss some of the ideas in the book, what he sees as trends in the industry, what is a higher purpose than any agile practice, and why he sees two different worlds of product out there. Even if PO's won't benefit from this where they are at now, you can be encouraged that there are better organizations out there.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Marty Cagan - @Cagan - Silicon Valley Product Group
EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products
AgileCamp 2019 - Empowered - Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results
Todd Lanford - I can’t sell Agile to you (And nobody else can either)
Movies Insider - How Pixar's Movement Animation Became So Realistic
Such a simple and fundamental question. What do customers want? How much time and energy do we spend on this most important of topics. Tony Ulwick has been thinking about that very thing for a long time, and written several books about it. In this episode Tony joins to show to talk a bit about how deretmining what those customers needs are is the key to so many things that make the Product Owners job of delivering value a bit easier. If you don't start with those needs, how difficult it is to find them out, and why your product may not be successful.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Tony Ulwick - @Ulwick on twitter - Strategyn
"What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services"
"Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice"
"The Outcome-Driven Innovation Process - Overview"
Michelle Yick - "How to spot a product led company"
Maarten Dalmijn - "How to deal with an absolute unit of a Product Backlog?"
Making decisions as a Product Owner is hard sometimes, mainly because each decision involves a trade-off. That makes people uncomfortable and hesitant since trade-offs are difficult to work through. You can't make everyone happy, and because you picked an option, that means the other choices won't happen. Such is life. In this episode, we'll go through that process of trade-offs, how to recognize them, make them better, and learn from them. PO's need to help your teams and organizations deal with these necessary sacrifices, big and small, so let's figure out how.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Annie Duke - How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices
Erin Wilkinson - Using Product Principles to Guide Your Decision-Making
Tyler Sax - The Value of Making Smart Trade-Offs by Airbnb Product Manager
Mike Cohn - Schedule vs. Cost: The Tradeoff in Agile
Jeff Gothelf - Do OKRs Work with Jobs To Be Done?
Ruden Ugarte - Data Driven Decision Making is an Oxymoron. Here’s Why
When your organization isn't pointed in the same direction, it's really hard for a Product Owner to work effectively. You can end up in pointless discussions, working on the wrong thing, and lacking a focus on real customer value. How can we help our teams and others get aligned with the same goals and visions of the company? In this episode, Janna Bastow of Mind the Product and ProdPad joins the show to discuss some of her thoughts and experience with helping achieve an organization become more aligned and ways to check in regularly to see how it is progressing. How do you work toward making sure all your ducks are in a row?
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju http://seektaiju.com/index.html
Janna Bastow - @simplybastow on twitter - http://www.simplybastow.com/about/
Janna Bastow - "Product Leadership: Autonomy, Alignment, and Psychological Safety"
Marc Kadish - "Collaborative Alignment – the ‘Auftragsklarung’ framework"
Brian O'Fallon - "Organizational Alignment Will Make Or Break Your Agile Transformation"
Russell Olsen - “Shipped Is Only the Beginning: The 10/10/10 Approach to Product Rollouts”
David Harris/Tom Croonesgorghs - "Bayesian Product Ranking at Wayfair"
Kicking off Season 7 with a look at the updated Scrum Guide that launched in November of 2020. What's new, changed, or removed that Product Owners need to be aware of. If you are following scrum that is. If not, maybe there's an idea or two to use in your own process.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Scrum Guide 2020 - https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
Dave West - "Scrum is about Value not Work. Reflections from Scrum Guide Update"
Agile for Humans - "What's brewing in the 2020 Scrum Guide Updates"
Roman Pichler - "Product Goals in Scrum"
Nat Green - "Stop Guessing - 9 Behaviors of great problem solvers"
David Pereira - "10 Attitudes of outstanding Product Owners"
Finishing up Season 6 with a Q&A session. Any/all questions on PO, Product, Agile, Podcast, anything really. Thank you everyone who stuck with the show through this crazy season with all the changes going on in your life and work.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Douglas Squirrel and Jeffery Fredrick - Agile Conversations
Joshua Kerievshy - Why are component Teams still so popular?
EP117
[117] - Speaking in Percentages?
When Product Owners start asking questions or talking about an activity, what type of questions do we ask? Are they open-ended, exploratory or curious ones, or are they binary quick answers with little to no requests for information? In this episode, we'll explore a small section of David Marquet's latest book and the implications it might have on how the PO's can change the way we search for better connections and data with our teams, customers, and products. Would it help if we starting looking for more probabilistic or percentage-based answers? Could we really make some impactful changes by rephrasing our questions?
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
David Perira - Why many companies will never hire a good Product Owner
Janna Bastow - Reframing backlogs and roadmaps for good
David Marquet - How to Avoid Groupthink - Leadership Nudge 228
David Marquet - Quality Questions - Leadership Nudge 214
David Marquet - Leadership Is Language
Gizmodo - What It Really Means When There's A 50 Percent Chance Of Rain
It's time for an updated look at a PO Maturity index. In this episode, Bob Galen returns to review the recent changes he made to his Agile Journey Index Maturity Model" and discuss why some of those changes happened. There's some feedback, some challenges, and some learning that we discuss along the way. Grab a sufficiently mature whisky and follow along. Maybe you and your organization can learn a thing or two about Product Ownership.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Bob Galen - Twitter - Blog - www.rgalen.com
Bob's Model - Scrum Product Ownership AJI
Scotch Whisky - How do you define maturity in whisky?
Jim, Kim, Bob - Organizational Agility Unleashed - Getting work done in an increasingly Complex Digital World
Marty Cagan - Discovery - Judgment
How much time do you, as a Product Owner, spend thinking about your user's core problem? How much time does the rest of the team spend exploring ideas and different approaches to solving them? Why don't you spend more time doing that? In this episode, we talk with Ant Murphy about some of the reasons that we need to spend more time, effort, and energy on the depth of our problem-solving. What would it look like if PO's and companies did go deep on understanding, iterating, and experimenting more? Our products will be better for it, users of our applications happier with it, and business will benefit more from it.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Ant Murphy - Twitter - Blog
Ant's Sketch - "Depth of Problem"
Joe Van Os - The Art of the Strategic Product Roadmap
AilgeLeanLife - The 5 Whys technique – dig deep to find the root cause of any problem
InfoQ - How Lean Problem Solving Increases Agile Team Productivity: a Mobile Applications Startup Example
Alistair Cockburn - How I saved Agile and the Rest of the World
Maryanna Quigless - PURSUIT: Framework for your next great product idea
The Product Owner's brain is a complicated thing. Some of the practices and patterns that we try to make it easier, can also cause us to miss some key elements or information. These Cognitive Biases show up in our shortcuts or established ways of thinking every day. It's important to understand, acknowledge, and find ways to counter those biases when needed. In this episode there are some of the main ones PO's might have themselves, see in others, and deal with during your work. Have one that you struggle with? Send it in.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Very Well Mind - 10 Cognitive Biases That Distort Your Thinking
Buster Benson - You are almost definitely not living in reality because your brain doesn’t want you to
PhD Insights - 4 Cognitive Biases Every Product Manager Needs to Combat
Gil Bouhnick - 84 cognitive biases that will help you design better-converting products
Brad Wray - Cognitive Bias Song
Jeff Payne - Why Setting Priorities Is a Core Agile Practice
Savage Books - The Incredibles- Pixar's Dark Magnum Opus
A common career path when companies start to become more agile is Business Analysts looking to become Product Owners. Sometimes that's by choice and sometimes that is how the organization and teams first move towards using agile methods and practices. In this episode, we welcome Lisa Williams to the show to talk about how she went through that transition and how she has worked with teams and companies to move other BA's into the PO role. There might still be some places where BA's can work on agile or scrum teams successfully. Have any examples? Send them in.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Lisa Williams - @lcw927 - LinkedIn
Jacqueline Sanders-Blackman - The Yin and Yang of the Business Analyst and Product Owner Roles
IPL - Moving from a Business Analyst to a Product Manager role
David Pereira- The road from Business Analyst to Product Owner
Angela Wick - https://www.ba-squared.com/
Simon Bates - Scrum in practice: the role of the Business Analyst
Adrian Howard - Scrum doesn’t say…
David Hoang - Zoom out of Zoom
A lot of PO's, teams, and organizations struggle with the principles of the agile manifesto. One in particular causes so many issues, that of simplicity. Adding instead of removing, more instead of less, trivial many over the essential few. In our products, systems, and structures you've seen the added parts that build more and more complexity and complications. Why do we collectively do that? What can you do to help simplify some of those items or start with a simple item to begin with. In this episode, there are some suggestions for how to engage your focus, some steps to work toward simplicity, and tips to keep it there.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Des Traynor - Product Strategy: Revisited
Chris Davies - Simplicity — the least understood Agile Principle
Ron Jeffries - YAGNI, yes. Skimping, no. Technical Debt? Not even.
Cognitive edge - Cynefin framework introduction
Christopher Laine - Advice to Product Owners from a Developer
Gee Paw Hill - Re-Balancing Made, Making, and Makers
Another technical topic that PO's either get drafted into or need to know more about, is Security. In all its various forms, needs, and issues, Product Owners need more information about how to work with the team, organization, and users on having a solid baseline and making improvements. In this episode, Coveros CEO Jeff Payne joins to talk about how he has seen the PO help and hurt security efforts, some things to think about during planning and daily activities, and who to partner with to get better.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seektaiju
Jeff Payne - @jefferyepayne - Coveros
Coveros - From Chaos to Successful Distributed Teams
Coveros - Continuous Security in Agile Development
LeanAgile Training - Question about the PO, vague requirements and team members
HBR - Develop Agility That Outlasts the Pandemic
Zack Bonaker - Do you need an “Agile Coach”? Probably not.
Even though you as a Product Owner are surrounded by teams, customers, and stakeholders, sometimes things can happen that leave you feeling like your all alone. It's a nasty feeling and not knowing who to turn to, who can help, and what to do next. A situation of isolation is something that POs can find themselves in for one reason or another. Todd Miller is back on this episode to share his stories and examples of when he was Lonely as a PO and what he did to find his way through that. We also talk about some studies and information on how some leaders find themselves or make themselves isolated and keys to eliminating that feeling of you against the world.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju - http://seektaiju.com/index.html
Todd Miller - @todd_miller11 - Fixing Your Scrum
Craft Brewed Agile - YouTube
Scrum.org - Lessons Learned from Implementing Evidence-Based Management
Forbes - Do You Feel Lonely As A Leader? Study Says You're Not Alone.
HBR - The Strange Relationship Between Power and Loneliness
Psychology Today - 7 Types of Loneliness, and Why It Matters
Full Story - What Drives Rage Clicks? How Users Signal Struggle, Frustration Online
Anthony Marter - Why we need to rethink Product Management in an agile practice
Looking back at the scrum guide is a good idea for a Product Owner. One of the foundational elements of scrum is the philosophy that it is built on, that being empirical process controls. What is empiricism and how can POs and others benefit from it? In this episode, some of the ideas around empiricism are explored and why they are important. Also some of the related and competing concepts are recognized for thought. If you have any favorite stories or empirical examples please share so we can continue to learn.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Scrum Guide - Scrum Guide
Mark Noneman - The Empirical Product Owner
ThoughtCo - Philosophical Empiricism
Jason Fried - Take a tour of Hey
ScrumMaster Toolbox - The PO who threw the team under the bus (Steve Jaccaud)
As Product Owners, we've helped to understand the customers' goals and found ways to collaborate with the team to build what is needed. One step that might have been overlooked is why would customers care? How do you let them know how amazing your product is for them? What you need is a great way to position your product in the market. That's where today's guest comes in, April Dunford has written an eye-opening and deep book on product positioning for you and your customers that PO's can greatly benefit from. Take a listen then grab the book so you can start winning in your market with her examples and methods.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Obviously Awesome Book
April Dunford aprildunford.com @aprildunford
April Dunford, Ambient Strategy - Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning
Holly MacDonald - April Dunford and Obviously Awesome
Jiajia Hu - How to think systematically as a UX Researcher
Christian Strunk - How to get started with user story mapping
Look at it, it's staring your poor Product Owner eyes down. It's relentless, unmoving, and completely in your way. You might be able to get around it some, but it's risky and could do something unexpected. That's right, it's another impediment. It's something that is stopping the team, the organization, or the customers from getting what they need to get done, done sooner, and without frustration. It's slowing you down so part of your needs, is to help remove it any way you can. In this episode, I'll share some hints, ideas, and strategies for dealing with, managing, and ultimately removing these pesky critters.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Ben Linders - Handling Impediments: Why it matters
Ken Power - Impediment Busting: Designing an Impediment Removal Process for Your Organization
Mike Cotteyer - https://www.leadingagile.com/2008/09/you-are-the-impediment/
Hans Samios - Why Hasn't Our Agile Implementation Lead to Cost Savings?
Tarun Kohli - Why Product Managers need to be better at storytelling
As with most loops, things come back around. In this case, some of the research for an earlier episode led to the book called Loops by J Cornelius which is definitely something Product Owners need to crack open. J joins in this episode to discuss how his book can help POs and teams understand their customers needs better and ways to constantly research, prototype, and test for their ( and your ) benefit. If you want to understand how J measures business success then listen in, better yet go get the book and learn even more.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
J Cornelius - JCornelius.com - NineLabs - @JC
Loops: Building Product With Clarity & Confidence
Loopsbook: LoopsBook-Resources
Deliver It Cast Ep 94 - The Loop
Marty Cagan - Spotify vs. Fitbit
Mob Mentality - Rob Myers on the next “Extreme” Methodology
When you think of all the things you need to do as a Product Owner, how do you structure your day, your systems, and your needs? For some POs, it's one of the harder aspects of the job. It's one of the things that you might need to look elsewhere for some tips and tricks to get and stay organized. The better you can organize yourself the better you can help with the team and organization. While it might be fun to go full Marie Kondo on your Product Backlog, start with something simple to help you first.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Inc. - How These 7 Entrepreneurs Stay Super Organized
Unito - How to Stay Organized as a Product Manager
Lean Smarts - The basics of 3S
Baker Bettie - Mise En place for baking
Cooking Light - How to Mise en Place
Durango Herald - To cook like a pro, start with proper preparation
Jeff Patton - The game has changed
John Culter - Journey to Product teams
What do you think of when someone asks about your Product? How do you describe it to any new members of the team, potential customers, or even relatives? Are there common themes to other products you bring out, or ways you speak about the products you own? In this episode, we get into how products are defined and what are some of the ways to think about approaching it. Todd Miller is back with us to add his thoughts and experience around how to define a product.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Todd Miller - @todd_miller11 - Fixing Your Scrum:
Marty Cagan - Defining Product
Pragmatic Scrum - What is a Product?
Roman Pichler - What is a Digital Product?
Mike Cohn - What Is a Product?
Modern Agile w/Richard Sheridan - Modern Agile Show #41
Richard Sheridan - Joy Inc.
Jason Fried & David Hansson - Remote: Office not required
Every so often the great debate, misunderstanding, or downright wrong theory is put forward about what do we have/call people, Product Owners or Product Managers. There's been a ton written and spoken to this particular topic and in this episode, I pulled together some of my favorites and explain my point of view as well. Sometimes the definitions and reasons are pretty simple, others, a bit more involved. No matter what your title or role may be, this show should help you think about how you can do it better.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Any Murphy - The Collision of Product Management and Product Ownership
Melissa Perri - Product Manager vs. Product Owner
Rich Mironov - We Don’t Hire Product Owners Here
Marty Cagan - Product Manager vs. Product Owner Revisited
Ron Jefferies - Names Remove Impediments
Bob Galen - Scrum Product Ownership: Navigating The Forest AND The Trees
Gabriel Steinhardt - Origins of the Product Manager vs Product Owner Dilemma (Video)
Heap - Product Analytics is Useless. Let’s Fix That.
Guillaume Moubeche - From 0 to $1m ARR in less than 2 years and without any fundings
Folding @ home - https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/
Sadly a lot of attempts at using agile or scrum fail. In many of those cases, there were things a Product Owner, Scrum Master, team, or company could have done to prevent it from failing. Thankfully, Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller have written a new book detailing some of the ways they have successfully worked with teams and people to solve those underlying problems. In this episode, they join the show to talk about areas of particular interest to the PO and things we can do ourselves, encourage in others, and help fix our delivery. Get your copy of the book and let them help you!
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Ryan Ripley - @ryanripley | Todd Miller - @todd_miller11
Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller - Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems
Scrum.org Webinar - Thursday March 26th 2020
Dave Wascha - Look to the Left
Deliver It Cast [20] - Remote Ownership
From time to time it's good to reset where you are at and see how the basics are doing. It is that time again for the show to reevaluate the first steps new Product Owners can take and for others to see if they are missing anything. Also a good way for anyone new to the show or missed a few to see what the last 50 topics were to see if going back and hitting one that has a particular interest for you for the first or second time. Great to be back.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Deliver It - [50] Back to Basics
Favorite and recommended PO links & books - Taiju Consulting Links
Freakonomics - #397 How to Save $32 Million in One Hour (@28:24)
Prochaska & Norcross - Change for Good
100 Episodes of Product Owner goodness are wrapping up with a retrospective and open questions. So much to be thankful for, so much amazing information shared this season with great guests and I want to thank all the PO and non-PO listeners for tuning in and helping make season 5 better than ever. The retrospective board will be open for feedback and ideas through the end of 2019, if you have anything you would like to share or suggest please drop by.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
EP100 Retro/Question board - Contribute here!
Tim Ottinger - Q&A on Velocity, Part I
Chris Voss - Never Split the Difference ( Negotiating as if your life depended on it )
Something that Product Owners have likely seen a substantial amount of in the last few months is the idea of "ProductOps". It appears there is a big push and it's time to learn some more about what it is, how it could help, and understand how different companies are using the idea successfully. For that, we go to the Director of Product Operations at Pendo, Christine Itwaru. Listen in as she informs, educates, and helpfully answers questions about what this means for PO's.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Christine Itwaru - @christineitwaru on twitter
Pendo - The Rise of Product Ops - ebook
Pendo / Sara Estes - How to hire a product ops manager
Product Plan / Shaun Juncal - The Rise of Product Ops: the New Discipline Powering Product Excellence
Nir Eyal - What it takes to repair a toxic work culture
Ron Jeffries - No Software: No Agile, No Scrum
EP100 Retro/Question board - Contribute here!
How do Product Owners handle having multiple backlogs for a single team? That was the question from a listener and in this episode, there will be some strategies and tips to help deal with this rather common issue. You might also find some ways to better tend to your own backlog as well. Got any favorite strategies, send them along!
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Mike Cohn - Is It Time to Do Away with Scrum’s Product Owner Role
Hilla Meller - Fuel and Friction: Five Behavioral Economics Lessons for Product Managers
Ken Rubin - The Importance of the Product Backlog on a Scrum Development Project
Perforce - Backlog Management: 6 Tips to Make Your Backlog Lean
Anne Wiltshire - Reducing a backlog of work using lean
EP100 Retro/Question board - Contribute here!
How do Product Owners, and other product people, fit into our company's structure? How does that structure work with the other parts of the organization to benefit your customers? In this episode, Josh Anderson joins from the Meta-Cast to discuss some ideas, questions, and thoughts around what makes a well-designed product org. It's especially relevant for PO's because we have a key role to play in how successful our teams, organization, and company will be.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Josh Anderson - nosrednAhsoJ on Twitter, www.kazi.io/
Marty Cagan - What it Takes to Build the Right Product Team
Marty Cagan - Factors in Structuring a Product Organization
Rich Mironov - How to structure Product Management
Roman Pichler - Empowering Development Teams
Maaret Pyhäjärvi - When the No Product Owner Breaks
Lately, Product Owners and others have been seeing and hearing a lot about "Business Agility". What does that really mean? To help explain and explore the concept and what it means for PO's Bob Galen joins us once again to talk about his writings and experience with the concept and where it came from. It is always good to stay informed about topics that you might get asked about and be able to understand how to talk about the topic with others.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Bob Galen - @bobgalen on Twitter, www.rgalen.com, www.agile-moose.com
What is Business Agility?
Creating Business Agility
Stephanie Ockerman - The Promise of Business Agility
Solutions IQ - The 2018 Business Agility Report
Mike Cohn - Why you should consider stopping sprint reviews
Wired - Can good design save lives?
When Product Owners hear or when we tell anyone "It's done". What does that mean? Do we mean it's mostly done, or done except for a few things we haven't finished yet. Is that really done? Unlikely. It helps to define in simple terms what a team, product, and group means when they say something is done. That's where the useful "Definition of Done" comes into use. Teams help create and understand what done looks like for them. PO's then make sure when we do use those famous little words, we actually mean it.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Tom Schwendler - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tschwendler/
Tom Schwendler - The Importance of Sharing the Same ‘Definition of Done’ with Your Software Development Partner
Ascendle - What the Heck is the Definition of Done?
Leading Agile - Definition of Done
Scrum Guide - Definition of "Done"
Ilan Kirschenbaum - Definition of Done vs. Acceptance Criteria
Troubleshooting Agile Podcast - Troubleshooting Checklists
Jim Head - Great Product Owners in Agile are a unicorn.
Dean Takahashi (VentureBeat) - How game user interfaces can inspire better tech products
Product Owners often get focused on what or how we are doing things for our applications and teams, and not how often. When you take a look at when your product and information cycles happen you start to observe some real opportunities. In this episode, we dig in a bit deeper on those loops that PO's have and what's important about each. Finding and talking about ways to shorten the loop is the goal so that our learning can increase, our processes change, and we can adapt to our customers.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Black Diamond - Competitive Advantage: the OODA Loop in Agile Organizations
Mind Tools - The Build-Measure-Learn Feedback Loop
Bob Galen - 4 Quadrants + 1
Jeff Gothelf - Lean, Agile, & Design Thinking
Gaining a deeper understanding of the users of our products should be high on a Product Owners to-do list. Building knowledge, information, and empathy with them will help us learn more about their issues and situations. An excellent technique for doing that is creating and sharing an Empathy Map that focuses on a specific person using your product. Building a map gets you out of your head and into theirs. That new perspective can help uncover ideas, perspectives, or issues your customer's faces.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Leading Agile - Why You Need Empathy Maps
Adobe - 10 Tips to Develop Better Empathy Maps
Rich Mironov - What do Product Leaders do?
Elizabeth Ayer - Don't ask forgiveness, radiate intent
When Product Owners start hearing about MVPs, we really need to pay attention to who’s talking and what they mean. MVP the term has definitely grown beyond its original meaning and frequently gets confused with many other things that aren’t really related. There’s a ton of information out there and we’ve shared some before. This episode tries to boil down some of it into something that you as a PO can use and take with you. Or at least a strategy to know when you're not talking about a minimal viable product anymore.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Jeff Patton - MVP: and Why We Confuse Building to Learn with Building to Earn
Product Collective - Testing MVPs with your customers
Melissa Perri - Finding the Truth Behind MVPs
Henrik Kniberg - Making Sense of MVPs
Product Love - April Dunford
David Dame - Agile and Impatience are Inseparable
How do teams and Product Owners know if what they are delivering is the right thing? Most of the time, you don’t, unless they are specifically treating their deliveries as opportunities to learn. The best way to learn? Try an experiment. In this episode, we are joined by two experts on product experimentation and how to get the most out of this practice. It’s something that PO’s are likely already doing, even if it’s not on purpose. After this episode, you’ll likely think differently about that.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Dave Karow - @davekarow & Trevor Stuart - @Trevorbstuart - https://www.split.io/ - @splitsoftware
Split (ebook) - Understanding Experimentation Platforms
Dave Karow - GOTO 2019 • Deliver Results, Not Just Releases: Control & Observability in CD
Taplytics - How to Build an Experimentation Culture
Mind the Product - Lean experiments: Tristan Kromer on better product process
Julee Everett - 5 Tips to Increase your Emotional Intelligence as a Product Owner
Andy Hunt - The Four Keys To Rapid Response Software Development
Product Owners need to understand that a significant component of how well the team is able to deliver, depends on their product architecture. In fact, it’s often a limiting factor in how agile you really can be. Because it’s so important, Allen Holub joins this episode to talk about what PO’s need to know about architecture, why it’s so important, and how they can help determine it’s direction. All while keeping the main value and focus on the customer's benefit.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Alan Holub - https://holub.com, @allenholub
Software Architect 2013 - Agile Architecture Part 1 - Allen Holub - Agile Architecture Part 2 - Allen Holub
Michael Küsters - Agile Architecture
Ron Jeffries - Story Points Revisited
MindSumo - 3 New Product Successes (And Why They Won)
Ok Product Owners, how well do you know your flow? How well can you describe it to others? What’s the limiting factor in your product, delivery, and even company? Unless you’ve created and shared a Value Stream Map, you really don’t know. Understanding how work happens, where it bottlenecks, and how much time is wasted is extremely valuable to learn how to deliver value sooner. Customers won’t care that there were extra steps, they want to use the product to solve their problem. Help others see how to do that better with a VSM.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Plutora - Learn the 10 Key Steps to Value Stream Mapping (VSM) for Software Delivery
Tallyfy - Value Stream Mapping: Definition, Steps, and Examples
Pace - Starbucks Coffee Goes Lean
Martin & Osterling - Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation
Glen Holmes - On Behavioural Economics
Eugen Eşanu - 7 Basic Design Principles We Forget About
It’s one of the core tenants of creating products in an agile way, and something Product Owners need to be keenly aware of, but what exactly is “working software” anyway? Some are confused by the term, opinions differ, and still, others think it’s impossible or not enough. In this episode, the focus is on a practical definition and one that should apply to every story PO’s and teams work on together. This is one of the telltale signs of successful agile efforts, frequently getting working software to people who need it.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Skytap - How Do You Define Working Software?
Gojko Adzic - Redefining software quality
Ron Jefferies - Twelve
Jeff Gothlef - The top 10 rebuttals to: “Agile is great. But it won’t work here.”
The Register - Accenture sued over website redesign so bad it Hertz
Zero Hedge - The Best Analysis Of What Really Happened To The Boeing 737 Max From A Pilot & Software Engineer
Personal Kanban - Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life
There is almost an incalculable number of ways a Product Owner can feel stressed. It can be overwhelming if you do not find strategies and mindsets to deal with stress effectively. In this episode, Geoff Watts joins the show again to discuss his recent thoughts on why we feel stressed and what control we have over how we respond. This was also a listener suggested topic and one that is truly helpful for PO’s to become more mindful and focused on.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Geoff Watts - @geoffcwatts - @theagilepubcast - https://inspectandadapt.com/
Geoff Watts - Stress-Free Traffic | How To Find The Silver Linings
Robinson, Smith, Seal - Stress Management: How to Reduce, Prevent, and Cope with Stress
Colleen O’Rourke - Coping with Product Manager Burnout
Martin Stahl - The Product Owner cargo-cult detection checklist
Dominica Degrandis - Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow
When Product Owners are communicating with stories, the way they are written and told can help establish some clarity. The stories are only part of the puzzle when collaborating with others and there is certainly more than one way to craft them. If you’ve written them the same way before and are looking for some alternatives, in this episode you’ll learn about some new formats, tweaks to existing ones, and ways to keep them relevant.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Crisp - “As a, I want, So that” Considered Harmful
Pragmatic - Writing the Market Requirements Document
Alan Klement - Replacing The User Story With The Job Story
Maarten Dalmijn - Unheralded Alternatives to User Stories
XSCALE Alliance - https://xscalealliance.org/index.html
Michael Kusters - Your Sprint Reviews suck, and that's why!
Jonathan Forman - Things you need to ‘do’ to become a successful Product Manager
There are a lot of Product Management skills that a great Product Owner needs to learn about. One of the best teachers of those skills is ProduxLabs CEO, Melissa Perri. She has a brand new book all about product roles, skills, strategy, and creating product-led organizations. All of these ideas are intended to help get you and your company out of the Build Trap, a place where customer success takes a backseat to shipping features. PO’s will benefit from adopting the ideas that Melissa has around finding real problems that help the people who use our products, and the systems that create them.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Melissa Perri - @lissijean - produxlabs.com - melissaperri.com
http://www.produxlabs.com/book/
https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2017/07/escaping-build-trap-melissa-perri/
https://uxpodcast.com/206-build-trap-melissa-perri/
TSSC - NUMIT Cheaper Better Faster: Toyota help feed Hurricane Sandy Victims
John Cutler - Value and Flow
What is a Product Owner to do when a story is too big to fit into a sprint? Or what about when a PO is working with an idea that will take some time to study and learn with the team? How do you treat these ideas? It’s common to use the term Epic to describe a problem that is bigger than a story and in this episode, that’s what we dig into. There are, however, many different takes, strategies, and definitions of epics. Understanding the differences can help you wield them successfully.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Kent McDonald - Epic Confusion
Mike Cohn - You Don’t Need a Complicated Story Hierarchy
Mike Cohn - Two Examples of Splitting Epics
3Back - Top 10 Tips To Becoming A Better PO
Neil Killick - My Slicing Heuristic Concept Explained
Many times as Product Owners we are asked to do more than the team can handle. Having a way to sort through all of the ideas, problems, and yes even requests are sometimes necessary to put in place. In the first episode of Season 5, the notion of a funnel to sift those items though is discussed, some thoughts on how to do it, how to make sure you focus on those things valuable enough to say yes to, and ways to show the scope of all those asks to everyone. Welcome back everyone!
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Bob Galen - Scrum Product Ownership, 3rd Edition
Justin Bauer - We’re Evolving Our Product’s North Star Metric. Here’s Why.
Ash Maurya - The Idea Funnel
CPrime - Getting from an Idea to Actionable Backlog
Teresa Torres - Prioritize Opportunities, Not Solutions
I truly hope that the Product Owners and people who care about them got a lot out of this season. We’ve had some wonderful quests, great topics, and learned a lot. In this episode I wanted to round up some questions that have been asked and leave you with some parting thoughts about PO’s, agility, and other areas. Thank you all so much for listening and sharing the show around.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Charles Lambdin - Estimating Cost of Delay
Andrew Rusling - Theory Of Constraints applied to an agile task board
Willem-Jan Ageling - Scrum — 17 things that need to be in place to succeed. And then one more!
Mike Cohn - 3 questions to determine if an organization is agile
Product Owners can learn a lot about getting feedback from users by picking up some UX practices. One of the better ways to do that is with a focused customer interview. In this episode we welcome Jessica Ivins who is a UX designer and educator to talk about some of the better strategies, methods, and questions to use. Interviewing a customer is a great skill for PO's to continue to get better at as it helps keep the focus on the user and the problems that our products help them solve.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Jessica Ivins @jessicaivins - http://jessicaivins.net/ - https://medium.com/@jessicaivins
Interaction Design Foundation - How to Conduct User Interviews
Interviewing Users How to Uncover Compelling Insights
Matt Isherwood - Customer Interviews
Jeff Gothelf - Agile Isn’t Supposed To Be UX Hostile
Jack Krawczyk - Product Leadership Rules to Live By From My Experience at Pandora
What mode are you working in as a Product Owner? Are you and the team working on projects? Or products? What is the way you’re organized, measured, or deciding what to do? In this episode there is some exploration into these two mindsets and what they really mean. Since this is a new concept ( for me at least ), there are some thoughts on what product mode could look like and what project mode has been successfully able to do in the past. What’s your take? Which are you working in?
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Annie Dunham How to Maintain a Coherent Product Roadmap
Yuri Malishenko - Two simple techniques that will dramatically improve your whiteboard skills
Sriram Narayan - Products over Projects
Jeremy Rossman - Project vs Product P1 - Project vs Product P2
Henrik Kniberg - Spotify engineering culture
Product Owners should really like our individual conversations and interactions with people, sometimes we also need useful tools to help do our job. Which tools are important, helpful, and the best ones to get good at? In this episode we will discuss some of the better ones based on my history with them, why they are helpful, and what you might look to do with each of them. If you have a favorite tool you use, do share it with us so we can expand our toolbox.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Arlen Bankston - Lean Startup Tools for Scrum Product Owners
John Cutler - That’ll Never Work Here: Heretics, Head Noddies, and the Drift Into Mediocrity·
Robin Johnson -3 Real-Life Examples of Incredibly Successful A/B Tests
Tools :
Realtimeboard - webwhiteboard - trello - leankit - pocket - snag-it - jing - balsamiq - groupmap - invision - pixabay - unsplash - producthunt - mindmup - cardboardit - storiesonboard - pendo - mixpanel - colors - picker - ludus
If you are a Product Owner working on a large product, then there likely multiples of you. Many PO’s working with various teams to achieve different goals along the same path. How can you work better with each other and change the organization to focus on the problems your customers have? In this episode there’s a bit better dive than before on what different team setups look like and how Product Owners can work together and help frame the outcomes. Along with a fantastic new book recommendation, this episode will hopefully inspire you to try something new.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Courtney Seiter - We’ve Changed Our Product Team Structure 4 Times: Here’s Where We Are Today
Roman Pichler - Scaling the Product Owner Role
Henrik Kniberg - Spotify Engineering Culture
Deliver It Cast - EP34 Notes on Scaling
Marty Cagan - INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love – 2nd Edition
C. Todd Lombardo - Roadmaps are Dead! Long Live Roadmaps!
Does Product Ownership need fixing? Are some of the common agile and scrum practices screwed up? Jeff Patton thinks so and has a really compelling talk that’s he’s given about 5 things PO's need to do, and do better. In this episode, Jeff joins the show to dive a bit deeper into where he sees those 5 things occurring, what we can do to correct them, and shares some insight as to where the issues arise from.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Jeff Patton - @jeffpatton - www.jpattonassociates.com
How Agile Screwed Up Product Ownership and 5 Things You Can Do to Fix It by Jeff Patton
Jeff Patton - 5 things you'll need to fix Agile product ownership
Certified Scrum Product Owner Course Passionate Product Owner
Joshua Kerievsky - Eliminating the Product Owner Role
Paulo Andre - How HelloFresh reorganized its teams to scale twentyfold
A common pitfall that Product Owners need to be aware of is behaving with authority they don’t have. A lot of people refer to this as PO’s and PM’s thinking they are the “CEO of the Product”. Bob Galen joins us on this episode to talk about some errors he sees in this approach and discuss from his recent post. We also discuss some ways in which Product Owners need to think and behave in a manner that is similar to that of a CEO. Do we put it to rest? Let us know what you think.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Bob - Let’s eradicate bad product ownership, part-1,2
Martin Eriksson - Product Managers – You Are Not the CEO of Anything
Marty Cagan - CEO of the Product Revisited
Ale Carlos - Stop saying Product Management is like being the CEO of your own product
Mind the Product - What we Learned at #mtpcon San Francisco 2018
Very rarely does a Product Owner get to work with a newly formed team. Getting started is a very important step so that the team understands what the goals, expectations, and vision of the product they will be creating. In this episode, you will hear some tips, strategies, and some audio clips of me doing just that while I visited our new team. If you have any PO tips for starting with a new team that were not covered, let us know.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Christiaan Verwijs - How to kickstart a great scrum team
Kristy Francis - 5 simple tips on starting new scrum team
Randy Silver - Gods, Superheroes, and Product Managers
Marty Cagan - Revenge of the PMO
Hearing from fellow Product Owners is a good way to learn more about the role. Having others share their experience and journey can give you ideas, insight, and practices to add to your situation. Last episode had a call to action and Paul Foster answered. In this episode he talks about this journey of getting started, learning, and growing as a PO for his company. Special thanks to Paul and to others who want to share their story with others around the world. If you have something you want to share or discuss, get in touch!
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Paul Foster - @paulmfoster
Len Lagestee - Even Happier Product Owners
Mike Cottmeyer - Fast food and a better place to sleep
Being comfortable with risk and uncertainty is a hallmark of a great Product Owner. Understanding how to deal with unknowns or potential issues can help PO’s plan better, show value sooner, and reduce how nervous other people are. Risk is a something that will travel with us as our products come to life. Keeping risks small, working through the known ones, and embracing the notion that customers using your product is a wonderful way to reduce many risks.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Sam McAfee - Product Management Is Easier When Your Team Can Actually Ship.
Ekaterina Novoseltseva - Benefits of agile project management
Agile for Humans - Exploring the 3 V’s of Product Ownership
Rich Mironov - Four Laws Of Software Economics
In order to communicate effectively, PO’s need to be excellent listeners. We must be able to understand and relate to what the person or group we are talking to are trying to tell us. Sometimes, we might even agree with them. When we can actively listen and turn on all the listening skills, we really start to engage and grasp the problems that we are presented with. No matter if it’s with teams, customers, or one on one conversations, we all can work on becoming better listeners.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Geoff Watts - Empathic Listening in Scrum
Glenn Llopis - 6 Ways Effective Listening Can Make You A Better Leader
Chris Massey - Building Product in a Post-GDPR World
Robert Mckee - Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting
One of the basic Product Owner skills is communication. Delivering, receiving, and improving how and what we are communicating can make or break our efforts. When there are issues ( and there usually are ), what are some ways to get back on track and increase the team and customer relationships? In a happy circumstance, John Cutler was thinking along the same lines and he joins the show to discuss ways that he has worked on repairing communication. We also talk about some other tips for PO’s to improve and get comfortable with their interactions.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
John Cutler @johncutlefish anchor.fm/john-cutler/
John Cutler - Huh? Maybe?
Scott Ambler - Communication on Agile Software Teams
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
Itamar Gilad - The Tool that Will Help You Choose Better Product Ideas
Mike Siemasz - The Product Owner Is Dead, Long Live the Product Owner!
Product Owners think a lot about delivering value and how best to do that. One way that can help focus those efforts is a technique from Gojko Adzic called Impact Mapping. On this episode, Gojko joins us to talk about the basic concepts, some tricks to asking better questions while putting one together, and ways to help facilitate better collaboration. It’s a very interesting area and skill for PO’s to learn and after listening, you should be able to start creating one yourself.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Gojko Adzic @gojkoadzic https://gojko.net/
Gojko Adzic - Impact Mapping with Innovation Games
Gojko Adzic - Product Owner Key Skills – Impact Mapping, Story Mapping and Valuable User Stories
Mark Schwartz - The Art of Business Value
Ronny Kohavi - Online Experimentation at Microsoft
Chris Williams - Why We Can't Stop Overcomplicating Agile
Product Owners should always work on trying to become better. Looking for areas to improve, selecting a few and then working on ways to make them successful is a good skill and practice to incorporate into your daily work. In this episode, we talk about why continuous improvement is so much a core part of the agile mindset and what PO’s can do to work through changing for good.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Willem-Jan Ageling - Modern Agile terms ambiguity — making a mountain out of a molehill?
Dave Grey - Updated Empathy Map Canvas
Lean Kit - Continuous Improvement Defined
Hakan Forss - Toyota Kata - Habits for Continuous Improvements
Melissa Perri - The Product Kata
At some point as a PO, will you “miss” an ask, you might even actually miss something important. It might be a small part of a larger story or even a detail of work that is happening now. How can you make sure that miss is not critical to the success of the delivery? In this episode, some of the strategies for reducing the chances of it happening and better ways to communicate what a perceived miss looks like will be covered.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Scott Ambler - Agile Requirements Change Management
Elena Yatzeck - How to Control Scope Creep in Agile
Spine Model - AFH 090: Walking the Spine Model
Product Craft - The State of Product Leadership
When your product gets really big and you need to work with teams at scale, what options do Product Owners have? In this episode, Dave West joins the show to discuss the Nexus framework and what PO’s need to know in order to work in this type of scaled environment. We cover some of the basics that are detailed in the new Nexus book and look at other keys to keeping multiple teams coordinated and delivering value together.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Dave West - @DavidJWest Scrum.org
Dave West, Patricia Kong, Kurt Bittner - The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum: Continuously Delivering an Integrated Product with Multiple Scrum Teams
https://www.scrum.org/resources/scaling-scrum
Freakonomics - Here’s Why All Your Projects Are Always Late — and What to Do About It
Martin Fowler - Revised Agile Fluency Model
One of the hardest parts of being a Product Owner is to find the required balance between so many seemingly competing directions and demands. However, it’s best seen not as a battle of opposing forces but a connectivity of interdependent aspects. Between teams and customers, technical and business, high and low levels. One should not dominate the other. Finding that balance is one key that I have found for success and on this episode, let us explore what some of those items that require balance actually are.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
PO Coaching and Consulting - seek taiju
Marion Eickmann - Keep the Balance - The Product Owner
Roman Pichler - The Picasso Product Owner: Balancing Users, Team, and Stakeholders
Hope Gurion - Why I Can’t Be a Good Girl and Good Product Leader
James Womack - Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation
David Marquet - Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders
Clarke Ching - Rolling Rocks Downhill: The Agile Business Novel that NEVER mentions Agile
Hearing how other people are successful in the PO role is a great way to learn new ideas. We’ve been lucky to bring a few stories forward and happy that more are wanting to tell their story. In this episode, we welcome Laurie Nelson who’s done many different roles including Product Owner and Product manager, to share her story and experience. This is also the last episode for Season 3. Keep learning and sharing and we will be back after a break.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Laurie Nelson - @laurielnelson - LinkedIn
The best resource for Product Owners is Bob Galen's Scrum Product Ownership book. It’s a great reference and source of information for how to do the role the right way. Its intent is a guide for beginner PO’s and a resource for more seasoned ones as well. In this episode, Bob joins the show to discuss the upcoming changes for the 3rd version. In it, there are some new areas, more stories, and more information that PO’s need to understand. A great deep dive into why some POs struggle and some strategies to help along the way.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Bob Galen - @bobgalen - www.rgalen.com
Bob Galen - Scrum Product Ownership - The 4 Quadrants of Product Ownership
Modern Agile #13 - Issues with Product Owner role
Moving from dev to Product Owner with your team is something that is quite difficult to do. There are a bunch of new skills, hats, and behaviors you have to be ready to learn. In this episode, we talk with Jamie Collins who has been on that PO journey for the last year about his experience and what he has been able to do so far. If you want to share your PO story with us please contact the show, we love having other people talk about their successes, learnings, and how they do the role differently.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Jamie Collins - @jamieuka
Darshana Sivakumar - How I transitioned from being a developer to a product manager at Amazon
Uptal Vaishnav - Can the Principal Software Engineer Assume the Product Owner Role on a Scrum Team?
John Culter - Fixing Quarterly Planning
Dave Thomas - Agile is Dead
Where should Product Owners look to engage with others in Product Discovery? The notion of not “knowing” what should be done can be uncomfortable or straight scary to a lot of people. However, the notion of learning more about our product and how our users can, and are already benefiting from it is a great topic to explore. In this episode, David Hussman joins the show to talk about his riffs on how great product teams make meaningful impacts and explore ideas.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
David Hussman - http://devjam.com/ @davidhussman
David Hussman - Products over Process
David Hussman - Effective Product Discovery and Dude’s Law
Henrik - Agile: Where are we at?
Kevin Eikenberry - How to Respond to “We’ve Tried That Before”
Should Product Owners be concerned about flow? Is flow a part of what a PO needs to focus on from time to time? That thought, and the response to it, initiated a deeper look into what flow actually is and if it’s something that we need to learn more about. There are several different aspects to flow and in this episode, we’ll dive into them and see if there are ways that we can at least help.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Bob Marshall - 10 benefits of flow in software
Johanna Rothman - Resource Efficiency vs. Flow Efficiency
Marek Bowers - Creating Perfect User Flows for Smooth UX
3 Bottle Oiled Wheels Demonstration
David Marquet - Creating Leadership and Engagement at Every Level
Rian Van der Merwe - The biggest mistakes product managers make (and how to avoid them)
The Product Owner role is established in the Scrum Guide. The behaviors, activities, and definitions of what a PO is supposed to do come mainly from this 16-page document. It’s amazing then how so few people, including Product Owners, have actually read it. If you are “Doing Scrum” then you should at least understand what the guide says. In this episode, Tim Ottinger joins us to talk about the mentions of the Product Owner, what that really means, and we discuss if most PO’s do those things. Once you understand what it says, then you can talk about if you and the teams are following scrum or notscrum.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Tim Ottinger - http://agileotter.blogspot.com/ @tottinge
Tim Ottinger - There is no such thing as a scrum development team....
Scrum.org - The Scrum Guide
Agile for Humans - AFH 074: The Past, Present, and Future of Scrum
IT Risk Manager - Fairness in processes and systems
Steve Johnson - Why Your Organization Cannot Innovate
Something that Product Owners can continually get better at, is making the stories we tell, and ask for teams to work on, smaller. Smaller stories provide so many benefits to everyone and allow us to become more agile. There are lots of different ways to approach this and in this episode, we’ll review some common ones that you can try on your own items. Even if your first step is just to make sure something doesn’t last from day 1 to day 10 of a sprint, it’s an improvement.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Diana Larson & James Shore - The Agile Fluency Model Explained
Cory Bryan - Priority Picking Principles
Mike Cohn - Advice on How to Split Reporting User Stories
Richard Lawson - Patterns for Splitting User Stories
Do Product Owners need to have estimates? If you’re like most people, it’s been an assumption we’ve had for a long time that of course, we need estimates. There is, however, a growing movement to get away from being estimate driven and to focus on more valuable things. So what exactly is the #NoEstimates crowd on about, and what might we PO’s need to do to understand and support it? On this episode, we welcome Ryan Ripley from Agile for Humans to talk about his view of what it means to not be led by estimates and how to get there.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Ryan Ripley - Twitter - @RyanRipley - https://ryanripley.com/ - Twitter - @agileforhumans
Ryan Ripley - AFH 020: #NoEstimates with Vasco Duarte
Ryan Ripley - The #NoEstimates Movement - #Path17
Barry Overeem - The #NoEstimates Movement
Matthew Heusser - Why your execs don't get agile and what you can do about it
Don Reinertsen- The Principles of Product Development Flow
Are you a certified Product Owner? Do you need to be? There are many different certifications out there, all asking for various amounts of your money, time, and attention. If certification is something you are interested in now or in the future, this quick episode will discuss some of the competing ones and which ones you should take more seriously than others. Then you too can summon the vast powers of certification.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Melissa Perri - Product Manager vs Product Owner
Jason Fried - Why we choose profit
Scrum Expert - Product Owner Certifications
Kym Gilhooly - Agile certifications: Are they worth the price?
What kind of career can a Product Owner have? How do you become one and how do you grow in the role and beyond it? In this episode, we address some ways to get started if you’re interested, ways to look at different opportunities to grow once you’ve started, and what you can do to continue past the role to have a larger or lasting impact.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Adam Conner, Aaron Irizarry - Discussing Design
Bob Galen - Certified Agile Leadership
KnowledgeHut - Career Path of a Product Owner
Scott Dunlap - Best Way For A Product Manager To Get A Director Or VP Job At A Start-Up?
Mike Cohn - Career Path of a Scrum Master
Product Owners have you ever caught yourself saying “Where did my time go”? No doubt you meant to get to that important customer or accept that story, or maybe even try out that new tool everyone is talking about. But something happened on the way to those items, and you’re not quite sure what. You thought you had the time, but it disappeared on you. How did that happen? This episode we address some strategies about better managing your time and share some stories about how you can make better use of the time you do have.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Wade Shearer - Product Owner vs Manager
First Round - Dear PMs it’s time to rethink agile at enterprise startups
Etienne Garbugli - 26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I'd Known at 20
Henrik Kniberg - Slack
Product Owners have a natural leadership role on agile teams. We are also leaders in the organization trusted to make decisions, engage with teams and with their help, deliver on a vision for our customers. Many times, it can be the hardest part of the role as well. To help set up some structure around how to make that vision a reality and to talk about many other aspects of Product Leadership, Steve Johnson from Under10 playbook joins Cory to talk about it and his latest book “Turn Ideas into Product”.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Steve Johnson - @sjohnson717
-
https://www.under10playbook.com/
-
Turn Ideas into Products
Howard Yu - How Amazon stays more agile than most startups
Ross Johnson - Ten laws to design by
Getting to done is an important step for Product Owners and teams. Finishing a story, making sure it’s done and then the act of acceptance is a great way to celebrate little goals. We have talked about items around the way a PO should accept a story and this time, that’s the focus. If you are interested in the “How”, “When”, and “Why” around on putting the last piece together for a story, listen up and enjoy.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Joshua Kerievsky - Modern Agile
Jamie Edwards - What Is Customer Effort Score and How Do You Measure CES?
Matt Anthes-Washburn - When is a user story done
Ram Santhanam - User Story Life Cycle
https://www.quora.com/How-do-product-owners-accept-reject-user-stories
Hearing from other Product Owners is a great way to learn more about the role. There are a great many techniques and strategies that you might want to try or see what works for others. In the first opportunity to talk with another PO about how they do their job and some potentially new ideas, we welcome Andrew Blue to the show to discuss how “The Dude” aka Dude Solutions, does Product Ownership.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Dude Solutions -The Agile Donut
Jason Fried -Don't Promise
First Round -Why Soldiers and Chefs make the best Product Managers
Often on the journey to becoming agile, Product Owners will need to deal with accounting and costs. Determining how much a story costs and how the value related to that story can be recognized is a great topic for PO’s to learn more about. There’s also some great resources that help us frame discussions with our stakeholders in financial terms. This episode explores some basic calculations and theories for better agile accounting.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Mike Cohn - Why getting to done is so important
Abhishek Madhavan - Why the best product managers don't build the features their users ask for
Steven Lowe - The move to lean accounting
Tom Breur - Agile Business Intelligence - accounting for progress
Michael Stal - Throughput Accounting and the Theory of Constraints
A common theme for Product Owners is how do I get better? The best answer is to get better at the basics. Inspired by another show that looks at its core purpose every so often, this episode looks at what the basics are since our initial podcast, what might have changed, and also serves as a reflection point for what we’ve covered in our first 50 shows. If you’re a PO who’s new to the show, this is a great place to start.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Eli Goldratt - The Goal: A process of ongoing improvement
Mike Cottmeyer - The Executive's Guide to Leading a Large-Scale Agile Transformation
Henrik Kniberg - Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell
Bob Galen - Scrum Product Ownership: Balancing Value from the Inside Out
Geoff Watts - Product Mastery: From Good to Great Product Ownership
In order for Product Owners to help teams deliver value to our customers, the product has to actually be delivered. The teams must perform some level of effort to get the code deployed and out the door. For that to be easy for everyone, DevOps is a set of skills and practices that allow that process to be automated, error-free, and turn delivery into a routine event. In this episode, Lee Eason joins to discuss what a PO needs to know about DevOps, why you should insist on it, and what you can do to help the teams achieve it.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - Looking for a co-host
Lee Eason - @leejeason - Deployability - The NPS of development team health
Steve Blank - The no excuses culture
DevOps Guys - DevOps and the Product Owner
Suzie Prince - The Product Managers’ Guide to Continuous Delivery and DevOps
When it comes to knowing what’s most important, how does a Product Owner prioritize? Which methods do you use to find some way to talk about and rank them with the team and stakeholders? In this episode, we look at some different ways to do prioritization and some contexts in which they would be useful. This is an activity that PO’s need to be really good at, so keep learning. Try something new!
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Des Traynor - Product strategy means saying no
Gerald Weinberg - Lullaby Language
Daniel Zacarias - 20 Product Prioritization Techniques
Steve Johnson - Quick prioritization
Rik Higham - Seven Simple Steps to Stress-Free Prioritisation
The latest offering from Geoff Watts is a great book for Product Owners about “Product Mastery”. Geoff offers some great insight into how PO’s can move from good to great through stories, examples, and some tried and true agile basics. In this episode, Cory and Geoff talk about why the best product owners are DRIVEN to find success for themselves, the teams, and the customers.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Melissa Perri - The Lean Product Management Manifesto
Michael Sahota - Top 10 secrets of agile transformation
Geoff Watts - https://inspectandadapt.com/ - @geoffcwatts - @theagilepubcast
Geoff Watts - Product Mastery: From Good to Great Product Ownership
Having useful metrics is such a handy thing for Product Owners to refer to. There are, however, a lot of useless ones out there that will make things worse for you and the teams. Finding something that allows you to keep up with important information, trends, and areas to use your unfair advantage are wonderful to have. PO’s can help the teams and stakeholders focus on a few key items to help drive successful ongoing delivery for your customers.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
John Cutler - Trello, “Jira Sucks”, and Tool Dysfunction
Jeremy Jarrell - 3 Ways Product Owners Can Help with a Great Sprint Planning
APN - Agile Podcast Network
Scrum.org - Evidence Based Metrics
Stefan Wolpers - Agile Metrics—The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Robert Boyd - 9 Scrum Metrics to Keep Your Team on Track
On our last 2016 episode, there are a bunch of Product Owner questions that need to be asked, and answered. Thank you all for your support in helping us grow this year, the ability to connect with great people and share the best information to help along your way is why the show was created. The show will return in Feb 2017 with new interviews, topics, and still focusing on the PO role.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Joshua Kerievsky - Customer Obsessed teams don't have product owners
Henrik Kniberg - Focus - Focus Keynote
Agile Contracts Book - Creating and managing successful projects with scrum
Getting valuable information in front of the Product Owner and other interested parties is a big key to success with agile. The easiest way to do that is to make it obvious and impactful where they are. An “Information Radiator” is anything that helps to accomplish that, it can be dashboards, burndown charts, or build status lights. Some of them are meant for the team, some are meant for stakeholders, and all of them need to be understood by the PO. Helping to build them and support their existence is the topic of this show.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Melissa Perry - Designing to Learn
Roman Pichler - Mindfulness tips for PO's
Lachlan Heasman - What makes a good Information Radiator?
ScrumPLoP - Information Radiator
Giulia Mantuano - Visualizing Interruptions on a Lego Wall
The most frequent relationship a Product Owner has, is with the developers on a team. Sometimes you don’t speak the same language ( business vs technical ) and need to find common ground. In this episode, David Frink, an experienced agile developer and coach, joins the show to talk about how to strengthen that engineer/PO relationship, and tips on how to deal with some resistance from them. Looking for ways to engage and understand the team, this is it!
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Ash Maurya - But will it scale?
Martin Eriksson - Things we learned at Mind the Product 2016
David Frink - Overcoming resistance how to engage developers in agile adoption
Thaler Pekar - Storytelling for engineers
Mikael Boman - Top 6 technical practices every PO should know
It should be a rare occurrence when a Product Owner needs to cancel and re-plan a sprint, but it does happen. How can you help the team decide what to do next and what part do you play in that activity? In this episode, we discuss some ideas on how to do exactly that with some examples of when Cory has needed to cancel a sprint before. Taking the step after that, what happens if you become so interrupt driven that you can’t plan consistently.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
John Cutler - #agilebrandproblem
Amandah Wood - Spotify-How the team designs holistic experiences for music listeners and creators
Ed Wehr - The Sprint That Blew Up
Mike Cohn - Sprint Planning For Agile Teams That Have Lots Of Interruptions
One of the best resources for Product Owners is Roman Pichler’s blogs and books. His latest book “Strategize” is a great source of information about Product Strategy and Roadmaps. Roman joins on this episode to discuss some of those areas of his book as well as the ideas around how best to use that information. It’s part of the job for PO’s to be constantly learning, and Roman is a great teacher.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Roman Pichler - romanpichler.com & @romanpichler
Strategize - Strategize Product Strategy Roadmap Practices
Gregor Meyenberg - benefits-of-transparent-costs
Amy Morin - 5 things to remember the next time you're tempted to say yes to something you don't want to do
Luis Goncalves - NPS - Help PO structure Backlog
One of the first things a Product Owner should do when planning a sprint, is to determine what the goal of that iteration will be. Will it be something to increase customer loyalty? Finally finish the promised feature so customers will use it? Or might it be to learn how to use a new technology? Setting the goal will help the team, customers, and stakeholders agree on the direction and focus for the next few weeks. In this episode we dig into the “why” surrounding a goal so you can knock ‘em out.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Luis Goncalves - NPS - Help PO structure Backlog
Maddy Kirsch - How Product Managers can say "No"
Roman Pichler - Effective Sprint Goals
Barry Overeem - 11 advantages of using a sprint goal
Even though it’s not what should happen, sometimes you have to pull double, or even triple duty as a Product Owner. It could be because of the size of the team or company, or that fact not everyone is “bought in” to the role the way it should be. Someone still has to be the PO and if that’s you, how can you make the best of a bad situation. In this episode, there are some ideas, tips, and strategies for handling multiple roles so you don’t lose control.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Nancy Duarte - Resonate
Michelle Pauk - Finding your Rhythm as a PO
Jennifer Yeadon - Should Scrum Roles Ever Be merged?
Mitch Lacey - Mixing Roles In Scrum
Product Owners need our applications and services to have very high quality when they are released. How can you help teams build in quality? A very good way is to make sure that test automation is a core part of how the product is built. Having the team spend time on automating most testing tasks for new stories and regression will allow you to be more confident in delivery. In this episode, Paul Merrill from Beaufort Fairmont and Reflection as a Service talks about some of the challenges, easy wins, and other reasons why PO’s should help drive this needed activity.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Paul Merrill - @dpaulmerrill - http://beaufortfairmont.com/ - http://reflectionasaservice.com/
Paul Merrill - 9 Patterns in Automated Testing
Stefan Wolpers - 10 Proven Stakeholder Communication Tactics during an Agile Transition
Christin Gorman - 11 Things Your Dev Team Wants From You
Geoff Meyer - Large Scale Agile Test Automation Strategies in Practice
How do you as a Product Owner, know when a story is done? Really done. How does the team know when to stop? You know when the acceptance criteria have been met for that story. If it’s not done, then the team isn't done. So, make sure you pay special attention to it. In this episode we talk about the particulars around the criteria, what are some better examples, and the real reason they are there. That way when they start walking and talking, you know they are ready.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
Bob - PRODUCT OWNERS ... STOP BULLYING YOUR TEAMS
Clayton Christensen - The Innovator's Dilemma
Steve Povilaitis - Acceptance Criteria
Courtney - A Beginner's guide to acceptance criteria
Everything you do as a Product Owner needs feedback. The teams, customers, and even the product itself will give you information about it’s current condition. You will need to respond as well with your feedback, but what does that actually look like and what do you do with it once you have it? In this episode, we welcome John Culter to discuss the different types of feedback and what PO’s can and should be doing with them.
Feedback:
twitter - @deliveritcast
email - deliveritcast@gmail.com
Links:
Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host
John Culter - https://medium.com/@johnpcutler Twitter - @johncutlefish
Henrik Kniberg - Spotify Rhythm – how we get aligned
John Culter - 44 Signs you are becoming a real PM/PO
Intercom (Sian Townsend) - Making sense of customer feedback
Intercom (Dan Ritzenthaler) - Product feedback you can act on
Anand Vishwanath - Continuous Feedback in Agile Teams