Scale Your Product Owners

 

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to be able to attend the Scrum@Scale certification course, taught by Jeff Sutherland and Kim Antelo.  There is a lot, from this class, that I could write about, but I'd like to focus on just one topic that I think is critical to effective Scrum, Scrum transformations, and scaling Scrum:  Product Owners.

If you have multiple Scrum teams that are working on different features for the same product, you need to scale your Product Owners.  I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment.

When you take the Certified Scrum Master (CSM) class, you learn the basics of leading an individual Scrum team as the Scrum Master (leading in the sense of a servant leader, not a manager).  When you take the Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) class, you learn the basics of participating on an individual Scrum team as the Product Owner.  Neither class goes in depth into what to do when multiple Scrum teams are working on different features of the same project.   I wouldn't expect them to; it's not the purpose of either class.

You might hear mention of Scrum of Scrums in the CSM class.  If you're not familiar with the concept, a lot of people think of it as a combined standup meeting where a representative from each Scrum team reports on his or her piece of the product.  They don't go into as much detail, and they only bring up blockers that can't be addressed at the team level. 

In Scrum@Scale, the Scrum of Scrums is actually what you might call the Team of Teams.  The meeting, described above, is called the Scaled Daily Scrum.  Do you see what is missing?  If you're going to scale your Scrum teams, you need to scale your Product Owners.  Why wouldn't you have a scaled, refined, prioritized backlog, a roadmap that covers the features that each Product Owner is responsible for, and a team of Product Owners that is responsible for these things?  This is called the MetaScrum, and it is sometimes missing when a company is trying to adopt Scrum.  Without this, your Scrum of Scrums, whether you consider it a team or a meeting, will be less effective, which means you won't be delivering value as quickly as you could be.

For more information on the terms I've mentioned and how to scale both Scrum teams and Product Owner teams, please refer to the Scrum@Scale Guide - https://www.scrumatscale.com/scrum-at-scale-guide/.