product owner

I recently went through Mike Cohn’s Scrum Product Owner training. I was a little worried I wouldn’t learn too many new things since we have already read all three of Cohn’s books. Mike, however, did not disappoint.

I originally listed several take aways from the training in this post. Then realized it was too long and that many of the take aways were a post unto themselves. So my plan is to cover each one as a separately.

1. 21st century Product Owners are now pigs

Contrary to popular belief, I say the best day of the week is Monday. Not Friday, not Thursday, and certainly not Saturday... Monday. Why is it my favorite day, you might ask? Because on Mondays, I get to review and edit our fantastic weekly podcasts. Sure, I usually know the topics ahead of time, and most days, I even participate in the podcasts, but in a world where yesterday's news may as well be last year's news, a refresher is always good.

Our production team recently made the switch from waterfall to agile. While there were some initial hurdles, it has proved to be a good move. But one of the biggest challenges we have using scrum in an agency environment is deciding who should be the product owner.

There are two camps: Client as Product Owner and Account Manager as Product Owner.

Client Camp

In the Scrum process, the Product Backlog is usually a constantly changing list of prioritized requirements for a project. The Product Owner is responsible for the contents, prioritization, and availability of the Product Backlog.

Further Reading