Resources for Product Owners

There are so many great resources to support Product Owners. Below are but a few of my favorites.

If you only have 10 minutes and want to understand what it means to be a great Product Owner…

Watch Henrik Kniberg’s 15-minute video at 1.25x speed!

Then spend the rest of your Agile Product Owner career absorbing from below…

Here’s a nice “nutshell” on Agile Product Ownership from Dandy People:

Front Row Agile / Mt. Goat Product Owners and Scrum

• The Role of a Product Owner: Responsibilities & Characteristics
• The Role of a Product Owner (Part 2): Life in the Fast Lane
• The Role of a Product Owner (Part 3): Anti-Patterns
• Mt. Goat Online Training for Product Owners
• Ultimate Product Owner: Optimising Product Delivery
• Better User Stories
• Write Better User Stories in Less Time With Less Aggravation

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BDD (Behavior Driven Development)

• Behavior-Driven Development for Product Owners
• Read Specification by Example – “the closest I’ve seen to a ‘BDD book’ (as a treatment of methodology)” says Dan North

HDD (Hypothesis Driven Design)

• https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2017/09/understanding-design-thinking-lean-agile-work-together/
• https://youtu.be/6GJs011eeKA
• https://youtu.be/By5OfgWVBG8
• https://youtu.be/18JCZ7Us1HQ
• https://medium.com/theuxblog/hypotheses-driven-ux-design-c75fbf3ce7cc

Scrum Alliance on Effective Product Owners

• Being an Effective Product Owner

Roman Pichler – Product Ownership in Agile

• Read all of Roman Pichler’s stuff
• Take at least two of his courses
• http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/books/strategize/
• http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/the-product-owner-responsibilities/

Stefan Wolpers on Scrum Product Owners 

• 28 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns
• If you like to learn by learning what NOT to do, check out Stefan’s “How to Sabotage A Product Owner — 53 Anti-Patterns from the Trenches” which includes such gems as
  • Insist on all projects being accomplished within a fixed time, scope, and budget setting.
  • Use the Daily Scrum to check on progress and hold the Product Owner accountable for not meeting your targets.
  • Enforce proprietary and obscure metrics useless to the Scrum team.

Marty Cagan – SVPG Silicon Valley Product Group

There’s a fantastic discussion on the “Product Management Theater” with Marty Cagan, hosted by Lenny Rachitsky .

Marty, who has worked with more product teams than anyone else on the planet, shared invaluable insights that are especially relevant in today’s rapidly evolving market.

• The Overhiring Phenomenon: Marty discusses the trend of overhiring during the pandemic and the proliferation of roles that may not deliver proportional value.
• Product Management Theater: Explore the concept of ‘Product Management Theater’ where roles that sound integral are often not aligned with the core objectives of true product management.
• The Role of Product Managers: Marty emphasizes the distinction between project managers and product managers, underscoring the strategic importance of the latter in delivering real business outcomes.
• Empowerment in Product Teams: Learn about the shift from feature teams to empowered product teams that focus on outcomes rather than output.
• Marty’s New Book – “Transformed” – addresses how companies can shift towards a more empowered and effective product management model.

Browse the Silicon Valley Product Group’s website and “Find out how great products are built”

e.g., the approach to exploring four types of risk: 

1. value risk (whether customers will buy it or users will choose to use it)
2. usability risk (whether users can figure out how to use it)
3. feasibility risk (whether our engineers can build what we need with the time, skills and technology we have)
4. business viability risk (whether this solution also works for the various aspects of our business)

More Resources for Agile and Scrum Product Owners

• https://hackernoon.com/product-owner-anti-patterns-22ed1f989867
• R Galen
• A podcast with a guy named Cory…..(http://www.deliveritcast.com)
• Scrum Product Ownership: Balancing Value from the Inside Out
• http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/product-managers-for-the-digital-world
• 10 Must Read Books for Product Owners
• Why Spotify Squads Are a Popular Failure for Product Teams
• Navigating Complexity: How Product Managers Can Apply the Cynefin Framework

Podcasts for Product Owners

Amplitude’s List of Best Product Manager Podcasts for 2019: Design, Marketing, Analytics and More.

• (Agile Uprising made the list 🙂 )

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Books for Product Owners and Product Managers

• Emma Butler has a nice post “Best Product Management Books 2019 For Newbies to Seasoned Vets & From Roadmapping to Design”
• David Pereira published The 10 books that transformed my mindset as a Product Owner
• User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
• The Art of Product Management
• Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way
• Complete & Utter Failure
• Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
• Specification by Example: How Successful Teams Deliver the Right Software
• Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs
• Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products