The people in an organization who understand business goals are critical participants in any agile process. They determine what constitutes business value and identify when it is needed – in short, they create a queue of work to ensure that teams are building the right things in the right order. While there are similarities between this role of the Product Owner and typical product management, there are also substantial differences due to the use of an agile approach which can strain a traditional product team. The Product Owners require their own training and coaching to understand their new responsibilities and to learn to work effectively with agile teams.

In larger agile implementations, there are often several people who are in the Product Owner role as well as many other stakeholders with business and domain knowledge that need to be included in the work. Berteig Consulting provides coaching to help Product Owners do this work effectively. We help with building product/project work queue, user stories, multi-team value coordination, estimating and planning, “definition of done”, value stream analysis, financial modeling, effective interaction with agile teams, methods of resolving conflicts, and facilitated workshops for other critical conversations.

Our coach will work with all Product Owners, and will work with other stakeholders including Process Facilitators, managers, team members, end users, marketing and sales staff as needed. Our coach will pay particular attention to working with the organizational sponsor(s) of both the product and the agile implementation process.

Activities

1. Initial assessment of existing product management
2. Training, workshops and coaching for all Product Owners as a team
3. Coaching each Product Owners with their product/project to generate the queue of work
4. Concurrent development of internal mentors for future Product Owners
5. Final assessment and recommendations

Outcomes

1. Clear sponsor goals (management tests) for each product/project and a clear understanding of how progress will be measured.
2. An effective and sufficient queue of work for each independent product/project.
3. A Product Owner group whose members are all trained in their new duties and who are able to effectively participate in the agile process.
4. A small number of internal Product Owners who are able to mentor new Product Owners in their duties.

Size of Effort
We provide one Agile Master Coach, and for each product/project you provide: one “apprentice” Product Owner, one business sponsor, and one process sponsor

Depending on the complexity of your organization, there is also a maximum number of independent product/projects that a single coach can work with.

Remember, the best return on investment comes from a combination of coaching, consulting, and training.