Xebia Blog

The Product Owner role in Scrum

In the Lean Software Development method Scrum there are three roles: the Team, the Scrum Master and the Product Owner. In my experience the Product Owner role is by far the most confusing and hardest role to ‘get right’ and provokes the most discussion. Even the mere definition of what this person should do is under debate amongst most Scrum practitioners I’ve talked to. I want to discuss the origins of the Product Owner role and my experience in how (not) to fill this role, especially in companies that don’t do product development.

The mythical Product Owner

I’ve seen many flavors of Product Owners and none of them really worked as they should have. Actually, rumor has it that good Product Owners actually don’t exist. Now that’s something we should be frank about if that’s true. If the Product Owner is a combination of responsibilities that doesn't work in practice, we should find some alternative. First, I'll explain my experience so far.

(more...)

Filed under: Scrum
2 Comments

For some years now I have been working as a tester in agile projects. In our projects we are trying out new ways to integrate testing into the development cycle and ideally to offer a complete project solution to our customers. In my vision the perfect offering would be to create working software with each development cycle, which has the actual ‘Done’ status. Not only ‘Done’ from a development point of view, but actually ‘Done’ from the customer perspective as well.
(more...)

Filed under: Agile, Scrum, Testing
No Comments

While I was reading some chapters from the book "Toyota way", the author was mentioning the importance on hiring the "Talented people".
I also found institute's giving training like " Job Instruction (JI) is the Toyota way for worker training and people development.".

With my recent experience on Agile-Scrum based projects, I started realizing how important is "Attitude" of the person involved in an agile team. (more...)

Filed under: Agile, Project Management, Scrum
4 Comments

It has been a hectic week at Xebia India. The Agile NCR conference (first Agile conference in Northern India) was in full preparation. The Ansal Institute of Technology (AIT) graciously hosted the conference on the university grounds and Xebia was the main organizer in cooperation with ASCI.

Just a few highlights of a day filled with high quality talks:

A gripping keynote was delivered by Pete Deemer to kick off the day. Basically Pete warned us for the hardships of Agile adoption by discussing his top 19 lessons of Agile adoption at Yahoo! and other companies. While some companies experience a delight when implementing Agile others have a very hard and frustrating time and don’t reap the full benefits. His 19 lessons were geared towards making sure you fall into the positive category.

(more...)

Filed under: Agile, General, Scrum
2 Comments

I had an opportunity to work as a "Scrum Master" (SM) on one of my last few projects. It was lot of fun with challenges and i had great pleasure on doing it. Thought I would share some few things that i have learned from the team management perspective as a SM.
(more...)

Filed under: Project Management, Scrum
1 Comment

Eelco Rustenburgh, Eelco Gravendeel and Serge Beaumont share their experiences on how to introduce SCRUM to existing companies.

This second part discusses;
- Finding a product owner
- How to start a project, seen from a business perspective
- How the product owner WILL eventually spend his time
- Impediments at IT Departments

Hosted by Robert van Loghem and Serge Beaumont.

So head over to the podcast page or subscribe!

Filed under: Agile, Podcast, Scrum
1 Comment

Eelco Rustenburgh, Eelco Gravendeel and Serge Beaumont share their experiences on how to introduce SCRUM to existing companies.

Hosted by Robert van Loghem and Serge Beaumont.

So head over to the podcast page or subscribe!

Filed under: Agile, Podcast, Scrum
No Comments

Just the other day someone asked me: “what is the difference between managing risks and working the impediment list?”. At that time I didn’t get much further than "impediments may be risks and they may already be existing problems, but not all risks have to become impediments"… A correct answer in my opinion, but not a very clear or complete one. So let’s see if I can provide a better answer.

(more...)

Filed under: Agile, Project Management, Scrum
2 Comments

Last week, along with certain other members of the Xebia team, I went on a Scrum Master certification training course given by Jeff Sutherland. Because of the coincidence of its timing, we didn't stop talking about rugby scrums during this session (yes, I know, this one is easy easy but I couldn't resist). For those who don't know him, Jeff is one of the founders of Scrum.

My role within Xebia organization is not to run projects and I was there only to do my job better as President of Xebia France (“What is well expressed is well understood”). So believe me, these two days have to be marked with a cross in my professional diary.
And, no doubt about it, it was a special experience. If I was lyrical, I would qualify this session as a breath of fresh air in terms of common sense, a pragmatic delight or even a well of clear sightedness.
Jeff has definitely influenced my way of approaching situations for ever. If I dared to, I would almost put Jeff on an equal footing with those Anglo-Saxon authors that any manager eager to learn should read, like Jim Collins and Jack Welch.
I'm not going address, even partially, the concepts delivered in the 200 training slides of the training nor even repeat the juicy anecdotes that Jeff was kind enough to share with us on the damaging effects of traditional project management: it would be a but a pale imitation, not to say clumsy, of course. But I do promise to write up a series of notes on “Agile Tips”.

For those reading these few lines and who, like us, are particularly fond of Agile Methods, Xebia is organising a “Scrum Master” certification training course with Jeff on 24 and 25 March 2008 in Paris (in English with the linguistic assistance of a French certified Scrum Master from Xebia).
We'll leave this news with the “Scrum sensitive” readers of this blog for two weeks before announcing the fact to the community on a large scale. If you want to enrol, send an e-mail to info@xebia.fr.

Filed under: Agile, Scrum
1 Comment

Agile methodologies are gaining higher acceptance in the software development community day by day. Agile methodologies show their superiority over waterfall methodologies of software development but in the excitement of having found a better way to develop software, Agilists have started emphasizing that the Agile Methodologies can deliver business value early. The promise of early business value delivery, though a very seducing argument in the favor of Agile, needlessly burdens the software development teams to deliver something that they were never trained for. Using early business value delivery argument in the sales process, you can create an expectation so that the software development team's performance will be measured by the business value they deliver with their software. Agile methodologies or any other software development methodology, for that matter would play a marginal or insignificant role in the early delivery of business value. Agile Methodologies should not be advertised as a new faster way to business value delivery with software.
(more...)

Filed under: Agile, Scrum
2 Comments