Every resource has a capacity, tailor it to your organizations needs!
Agile frameworks like Scrum and SAFe provide documentation on specific team structures, roles, ceremonies, time boxes, and artifacts which make implementation seem very straight forward. If you have ever had to implement or transition to one of these frameworks you know that the implementation is anything but straight forward. So, in order to develop a framework, you must make important decisions based off the needs of your business, financial constraints, and culture of the company. These tactical implementation details will differ from company to company. If you choose to hire a professional you will find that their implementation details will vary from other professionals in the same exact space. Every company is different and will require solutions beyond the documentation that you can read online or in a book. This can be frustrating so in this blog we are going to peel back the layers of the Product Owner (PO) role and discuss some major decisions you will have to consider when making investment into these game changing roles at your company.
Product driven companies are more successful in the long term as compared to the alternatives such as marketing, sales, or technology driven companies. This is due to the customer-centric focus imbedded into the product itself and the delivery against a strategic roadmap that sets them up for success against competitors strategies. Digging into the strengths and weaknesses of how companies operate will will have to be it's own blog sometime in the future but stating this fact shows how important it is to have a matured Product Organization and to invest in great Product leaders at your company. If you are reading this today and you are planning to build out a Product organization (or maybe you already have one), I want you to really think about how you are going to structure that organization. Every company is very different in their approach to hire and build a product team simply because every company has their own unique needs. Given most companies are delivering products to customers, you would think that the Product organization would be important to get right, but the fact is that some businesses may not have a Product organization today, they are in the early stages of their implementation of one, or they have decided not to make the investment all together.
Okay, so we agree that the Organization that defines the product strategy and breaks down the work that gets delivered is extremely important… so how do we set it up properly? Well, first and foremost you need a single strategic owner. Call it the Chief Product Officer, call it the VP of Product, call it whatever you want but there needs to be a single, empowered person that goes to bed worrying about the health of their strategic product backlog and wakes up in the morning with a fire to improve it and is empowered to do so. Once you have established the right person to lead the Product organization, you will have to figure out how to align Product Owners in a way that will drive the most value out of your company and into the hands of your customer base through the delivery of your product to production.
Like everything in life, Product Owners have physical capacity limitations and in order to plan correctly you will have to decide where to draw the line in terms of client interactions, span of responsibilities, and agile team availability. All are very important, require a lot of time, and are not infinitely scalable. Given the X axis that is made up of number of agile teams supported and the Y axis which represents the scale of client interaction, here are the three ways you can scale your Product team based off the needs of your company:
1) Scale Product Owners vertically (Smaller piece of the product):
Your Product Owner owns a particular component of your product from customer relationships —> ideation —> prioritization —> backlog refinement —> development/testing —> deployment —> through maintenance and the cycle repeats. They are focused on both long term strategy of the component they own as well as the tactical implementation and feedback from customers once it’s deployed to production. In this scenario a PO will likely have the bandwidth to support a single agile team because the scope of their responsibilities are scaled to the full product life cycle. There are benefits to this solution but it means that you will have to hire additional POs for complete product coverage.
2) Scale Product Owners horizontally (Larger piece of the product):
Your Product Owner owns the product backlog for up to 3 teams BUT their scope of ownership in the Product lifecycle is reduced to low client interaction —> requirements gathering —> prioritization —> backlog refinement —> development/testing. In this scenario you have a PO that has given up or significantly reduced the amount of direct customer interaction on a daily basis while focusing on the multiple agile teams they support (I.e less strategic and more tactical). Doing this will allow an experienced PO to focus on 2-3 teams instead of focusing a single team from end-to-end. To make up for the lost customer interaction, a Senior Product position is added on top which acts as a funnel into the organization to capture client feedback at the highest levels and align on a cross-functional strategy that is tied in with the long term strategic plan.
3) Balanced Approach:
Like most things in life you won't lose with a balanced approach so if you do not heavily favor #1 or #2 above, #3 is probably the right fit for you and your company. This approach slightly reduces the amount of client interaction while also reducing the number of agile teams that they support. An experienced PO with this approach will have the capacity to support up to 2 agile teams while maintaining strong customer relationships. Depending on the size of your organization, you may also consider having a cross-functional Product resource that helps to ensure alignment across multiple teams as they deliver against a strategic roadmap.
When structuring your product organization and aligning roles and responsibilities to the resources in your organization you must think about the teams capacity, how to align ownership to to value streams, and what the right level of client interaction is for you. Every company has different needs and can apply the PO role differently BUT every resource has a physical capacity so be measured in how you allocate a POs time!
Thanks for the read!
Author – ‘Process Pat’ McClain
Experience – I am a process coach that has been hired to lead large scale global process change initiatives that drive competitive advantages in different areas such as increased predictability, improved productivity, cost reduction, and increased efficiency across Product Development and other related organizations. These results are achieved through efforts I have led related to agile training/maturity and toolset analysis/consolidation efforts that align with the people and processes of the organization I am working with.
Disclaimer: This article is not affiliated with any current employer and is based off prior professional experience over the last decade.
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