Product Owner / Project Manager, what am I?

We talk about value in the agile world all of the time, however, what we think is valuable and what has been provided to me to deliver value can be much different.

I tell teams I work with that we need to manage reality or it will manage you. Telling a Product Owner and team to focus on value when they are tasked with delivering a project is like asking someone to build their dream house but are provided the blueprints for an apartment complex.

I can think about all of the great things I’d like in my dream home, but what I have are people and supplies to build an apartment complex. Focusing on what I as the Product Owner thinks is valuable has no relevance to what my team and I are being asked to deliver.

This is the place that almost all Product Owners face every day. At best we are prioritizing in the most efficient way how our team will deliver what has already been decided, but rarely are we can start working with our teams on an idea, or small experiment, as part of what we are being asked to deliver.

For leadership that sounds like waste and that can negatively impact the bottom line in their mind.

Until we can get leadership engaged in a way that provides them insight into how working in small increments can lead to less waste and more valuable things being delivered.

In reality, much of the work that teams are asked to deliver contains features that will rarely if ever be used. They were added to make the project look attractive enough to obtain funding.

Manage reality or it will manage you. The reality is that until we consistently tie incremental product or capability development to strategically aligned value organizations will always be more comfortable with project-based delivery.

My investment-based Portfolio Management approach has been successfully implemented at several organizations, I’m planning on doing a Webinar on this soon. If interested DM me so I can add you to the invite list.