Product Owners in Action – Acts of Leadership Webinar Q&A

 

On March 30^th, 2022, Joanna and I held a Webinar on projectmanagement.com, Product Owners in Action – Acts of Leadership. If you want to listen to the webinar, click here.

Thank you to all those who asked questions on the live webinar. We were able to answer many of the questions, but unfortunately, we run out of time to answer all the questions. In this post, we are providing written responses to those questions that we did not answer during the webinar. If you have any further questions, please contact us. Thank you for your support and great questions and comments.

Q: Please help understand why a PM needs to become a Product Owner- these are two different and needed roles right?

A: The project manager and product owner are two different roles. For career development, one option for a project manager is to become a product owner, but it is just one option. We responded to this question at the 13-minute mark of the webinar.

Q: What is your understanding of the difference between a Product Manager and a Product Owner?

A: In most organizations, these two titles are used interchangeably. In checking various websites, there is a variety of definitions that often contradict each other. For us, the product owner works as part of the team that owns the product backlog and accepts user stories. The product managers work in a business function managing products, portfolios, and product roadmaps. Depending on the product, all these responsibilities can be combined into one role. See the 50-minute mark of the webinar.

Q: What is the difference between Agility & Agile?

A: For our purposes Agile is a life-cycle approach for product development. The agile approach uses short increments to deliver product features to customers. Agility is the ability of organizations or teams to adapt to changes in the environment. As mentioned in the webinar at about the 18-minute mark, agile is a way to get to an outcome, which can be organization agility. On June 17, 2021, we did a webinar on projectmanagement.com titled Agility in a Nutshell (https://www.projectmanagement.com/videos/713036/agility-in-a-nutshell). Please check out this webinar for more about agility.

Q: How can a PM transition into a PO role, consider that POs typically are SMEs? Can you explain the learning curve?

A: Good question, and of course the transition path depends on the product and organization. However, as a project manager, you can become familiar with the business, understand the benefits and how the business works, marketing, sales, product vision and mission. And if you think you are passionate about the product life-cycle, then you are there, you can pursue that career as a PO and see where it takes you. See the 51-minute mark of the webinar. Here is the link to the Webinar mentioned, Product Management, The Fourth P or Project Management held on July 9, 2020, https://www.projectmanagement.com/videos/642853/product-management--the-fourth-p-of-project-management. The other webinar, A Golden Partnership was not done as part of this series.

Q: In an organization where only parts of QA and Sales at other locations (who we do not have regular communications with) have contact with the customer, what is the best way to have lines of communication to maintain focus on the customer.

A: The great thing about today’s world is we have so many options to communicate and interact virtually. With the use of technology, can you join your QA and Sales when they talk to the customer? Can you add measurements to your product to give you feedback on the product? Can you be a ‘secret shopper’, and become a customer of your own product? Can you find groups on social media where customers leave feedback? Can you meet customers virtually? There are so many ways to get feedback from your customer and many of them do not even require a meeting with customers. See the 53-minute mark of the webinar

Q: I feel project managers who have spent their entire careers in project management and wish to transition into a product owner role do not have a good understanding of the role of a product owner and the business knowledge a product owner needs.

A: We agree. See the 54-minute mark of the webinar

Q: How can we balance self-organized decision-making vs. cross-functional collaboration? Thanks.

A: A self-organized team encourages collaboration between all team members. The fact the team members who come from different functional areas come together for the purpose of finding the best way of working together, therefore self-organizing. The key is to create a core team that communicates to all team members. See the 54-minute mark of the webinar.

Q: On 'Hone the Team'. Had you faced a challenge to make team accountable and empowered because organizations do not delegate power to 'expend money'?

A: Yes, if you are going to empower a team and make them accountable, you need to ensure that the team has the tools to be successful, which includes the ability to spend money. If management is not willing to give up the authority, then they are not ready to empower the teams. The key is to educate management on how the team works and to keep open communication with management. One way an organization can do this is to provide the team with a budget that they can spend as they fit to accomplish the objective. If the team needs more money, they must ask for it with the necessary justification. See the 56-minute mark of the webinar.

Q: How is "Agile as an organization" help address business disruptions caused by market shifts, technology transitions, emergency situations like Covid or war etc.

A: The whole idea of being “agile as an organization” is being able to quickly adapt to a changing environment. The idea is that when there is a significant event, COVID, that occurs, the organization can quickly make the adjustments and then keep refining its approach based on feedback. In the case of COVID, an agile organization was able to allow staff to work from home effectively in days, while an organization that is not agile takes months to figure out what to do. See the 59-minute mark of the webinar.

Q: Is this similar to the Tuckman rule?

A: I assume you are referring to the “Hone the Team” slide 13. In this slide, you can think we are focusing on the Performing level in the Tuckman model to take the team to the next level. See the 57-minute mark of the webinar.

Q: How to balance empowered teams with the need for oversight in companies that are highly regulated by outside bodies for example?

A: An empowered team makes decisions for the work performed. The regulations provide guidance on what the work should look like, but the team can decide on how to perform it the best to meet the ‘what's the regulatory requirements. Remember it is about working together to have a successful product. See the 58-minute mark of the webinar

Q: How do you define a team canvas?

A: We use the team canvas as defined on www.teamcanvas.com