The top con to a product owner being technical is rushing to solutions design where it’s the job of the dev team to decide the how. Writing stories only on why and how is slightly difficult 😊
Great topic. And my take is, based on context the answer will vary. Say, the team is core platform team (hope u know what I mean) who supports in the organization in building, maintaining, optimizing common components. Having a PO who can speak in that team’s language is really desirable. On other hand, if the team is functional team having a PO who has better grip on customer need, stakeholders management is always great. Someone said, a great PO has engineer’s mind, customer’s heart and diplomat’s mouth.
Thinking about Product Owners, how about talking about status reports in Agile/Scrum? Have you guys touched on that topic? Status reports are such an integral part of the Project Management role, what happens to them as we start using agile practices?
I believe that the answer to that question is "no". The PO does not need technical skills (related to how the solutions will be built). If the PO has technical skills, and he/she believes the developers are not implementing the best practices/technologies, he might ask for a new cell that better suits his/hers expectations, but, if we consider (as we always should) the value of "Respect", he can not even suggest a different technical approach for building the solution. No matter what background or knowledge the PO or the SM have, they shouldn't cross their roles' boundaries.
In my 10 years of software development, 9/10 times the non-techie PO was useless or lacking compared to the techie PO, unable to break down problems into tasks well because they lack the tech knowledge to go deeper, unable to understand talks of tech solutions and which way the team should drive development, unable to connect github to their task management tool to automate task creation. The PO’s main job is to bring value to the development process and if it is a tech project, that value is related to tech. POing without the tech aspect is just the easy way into POing and unfortunately it will sacrifice some respect from those who do know the tech on the Scrum Team who can see in meetings that this PO just can’t contribute as much to the project
In my 10 years of software development, 9/10 times the non-techie PO was useless or lacking compared to the techie PO, unable to break down problems into tasks well because they lack the tech knowledge to go deeper, unable to understand talks of tech solutions and which way the team should drive development, unable to connect github to their task management tool to automate task creation. The PO’s main job is to bring value to the development process and if it is a tech project, that value is related to tech. POing without the tech aspect is just the easy way into POing and unfortunately it will sacrifice some respect from those who do know the tech on the Scrum Team who can see in meetings that this PO just can’t contribute as much to the project
The top con to a product owner being technical is rushing to solutions design where it’s the job of the dev team to decide the how. Writing stories only on why and how is slightly difficult 😊
Great topic. And my take is, based on context the answer will vary. Say, the team is core platform team (hope u know what I mean) who supports in the organization in building, maintaining, optimizing common components. Having a PO who can speak in that team’s language is really desirable. On other hand, if the team is functional team having a PO who has better grip on customer need, stakeholders management is always great. Someone said, a great PO has engineer’s mind, customer’s heart and diplomat’s mouth.
perhaps a "technical awareness" is more desirable than being full on dev skilled up
Seems really apt since I signed today exactly as a technical Scrum Master...
Must be destiny.
Thinking about Product Owners, how about talking about status reports in Agile/Scrum? Have you guys touched on that topic? Status reports are such an integral part of the Project Management role, what happens to them as we start using agile practices?
I would also like to see a video that addresses status reporting and road maps.
Excellent point about platform teams.
Zombie Scrum Survival Guide. This is the way.
This is the way...
I believe that the answer to that question is "no". The PO does not need technical skills (related to how the solutions will be built). If the PO has technical skills, and he/she believes the developers are not implementing the best practices/technologies, he might ask for a new cell that better suits his/hers expectations, but, if we consider (as we always should) the value of "Respect", he can not even suggest a different technical approach for building the solution. No matter what background or knowledge the PO or the SM have, they shouldn't cross their roles' boundaries.
In my 10 years of software development, 9/10 times the non-techie PO was useless or lacking compared to the techie PO, unable to break down problems into tasks well because they lack the tech knowledge to go deeper, unable to understand talks of tech solutions and which way the team should drive development, unable to connect github to their task management tool to automate task creation. The PO’s main job is to bring value to the development process and if it is a tech project, that value is related to tech. POing without the tech aspect is just the easy way into POing and unfortunately it will sacrifice some respect from those who do know the tech on the Scrum Team who can see in meetings that this PO just can’t contribute as much to the project
Technical skills? not needed as I understand that term. I would suggest subject matter expertise of the product being developed would be necessary.
In my 10 years of software development, 9/10 times the non-techie PO was useless or lacking compared to the techie PO, unable to break down problems into tasks well because they lack the tech knowledge to go deeper, unable to understand talks of tech solutions and which way the team should drive development, unable to connect github to their task management tool to automate task creation. The PO’s main job is to bring value to the development process and if it is a tech project, that value is related to tech. POing without the tech aspect is just the easy way into POing and unfortunately it will sacrifice some respect from those who do know the tech on the Scrum Team who can see in meetings that this PO just can’t contribute as much to the project