Deliver It Cast

As Product Owners, we've helped to understand the customers' goals and found ways to collaborate with the team to build what is needed. One step that might have been overlooked is why would customers care? How do you let them know how amazing your product is for them? What you need is a great way to position your product in the market. That's where today's guest comes in, April Dunford has written...

Look at it, it's staring your poor Product Owner eyes down. It's relentless, unmoving, and completely in your way. You might be able to get around it some, but it's risky and could do something unexpected. That's right, it's another impediment. It's something that is stopping the team, the organization, or the customers from getting what they need to get done, done sooner, and without frustration....

As with most loops, things come back around. In this case, some of the research for an earlier episode led to the book called Loops by J Cornelius which is definitely something Product Owners need to crack open. J joins in this episode to discuss how his book can help POs and teams understand their customers needs better and ways to constantly research, prototype, and test for their ( and your ) b...

When you think of all the things you need to do as a Product Owner, how do you structure your day, your systems, and your needs? For some POs, it's one of the harder aspects of the job. It's one of the things that you might need to look elsewhere for some tips and tricks to get and stay organized. The better you can organize yourself the better you can help with the team and organization. While it...

What do you think of when someone asks about your Product? How do you describe it to any new members of the team, potential customers, or even relatives? Are there common themes to other products you bring out, or ways you speak about the products you own? In this episode, we get into how products are defined and what are some of the ways to think about approaching it. Todd Miller is back with us...

Every so often the great debate, misunderstanding, or downright wrong theory is put forward about what do we have/call people, Product Owners or Product Managers. There's been a ton written and spoken to this particular topic and in this episode, I pulled together some of my favorites and explain my point of view as well. Sometimes the definitions and reasons are pretty simple, others, a bit more...

Sadly a lot of attempts at using agile or scrum fail. In many of those cases, there were things a Product Owner, Scrum Master, team, or company could have done to prevent it from failing. Thankfully, Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller have written a new book detailing some of the ways they have successfully worked with teams and people to solve those underlying problems. In this episode, they join the sh...

From time to time it's good to reset where you are at and see how the basics are doing. It is that time again for the show to reevaluate the first steps new Product Owners can take and for others to see if they are missing anything. Also a good way for anyone new to the show or missed a few to see what the last 50 topics were to see if going back and hitting one that has a particular interest for...

100 Episodes of Product Owner goodness are wrapping up with a retrospective and open questions. So much to be thankful for, so much amazing information shared this season with great guests and I want to thank all the PO and non-PO listeners for tuning in and helping make season 5 better than ever. The retrospective board will be open for feedback and ideas through the end of 2019, if you have anyt...

Something that Product Owners have likely seen a substantial amount of in the last few months is the idea of "ProductOps". It appears there is a big push and it's time to learn some more about what it is, how it could help, and understand how different companies are using the idea successfully. For that, we go to the Director of Product Operations at Pendo, Christine Itwaru. Listen in as she infor...

How do Product Owners handle having multiple backlogs for a single team? That was the question from a listener and in this episode, there will be some strategies and tips to help deal with this rather common issue. You might also find some ways to better tend to your own backlog as well. Got any favorite strategies, send them along! Feedback: twitter - @deliveritcast email - deliveritcast@gmail.co...

How do Product Owners, and other product people, fit into our company's structure? How does that structure work with the other parts of the organization to benefit your customers? In this episode, Josh Anderson joins from the Meta-Cast to discuss some ideas, questions, and thoughts around what makes a well-designed product org. It's especially relevant for PO's because we have a key role to play i...

Lately, Product Owners and others have been seeing and hearing a lot about "Business Agility". What does that really mean? To help explain and explore the concept and what it means for PO's Bob Galen joins us once again to talk about his writings and experience with the concept and where it came from. It is always good to stay informed about topics that you might get asked about and be able to und...

When Product Owners hear or when we tell anyone "It's done". What does that mean? Do we mean it's mostly done, or done except for a few things we haven't finished yet. Is that really done? Unlikely. It helps to define in simple terms what a team, product, and group means when they say something is done. That's where the useful "Definition of Done" comes into use. Teams help create and understand w...

Product Owners often get focused on what or how we are doing things for our applications and teams, and not how often. When you take a look at when your product and information cycles happen you start to observe some real opportunities. In this episode, we dig in a bit deeper on those loops that PO's have and what's important about each. Finding and talking about ways to shorten the loop is the go...

Gaining a deeper understanding of the users of our products should be high on a Product Owners to-do list. Building knowledge, information, and empathy with them will help us learn more about their issues and situations. An excellent technique for doing that is creating and sharing an Empathy Map that focuses on a specific person using your product. Building a map gets you out of your head and int...

When Product Owners start hearing about MVPs, we really need to pay attention to who's talking and what they mean. MVP the term has definitely grown beyond its original meaning and frequently gets confused with many other things that aren't really related. There's a ton of information out there and we've shared some before. This episode tries to boil down some of it into something that you as a PO...

How do teams and Product Owners know if what they are delivering is the right thing? Most of the time, you don't, unless they are specifically treating their deliveries as opportunities to learn. The best way to learn? Try an experiment. In this episode, we are joined by two experts on product experimentation and how to get the most out of this practice. It's something that PO's are likely already...

Product Owners need to understand that a significant component of how well the team is able to deliver, depends on their product architecture. In fact, it's often a limiting factor in how agile you really can be. Because it's so important, Allen Holub joins this episode to talk about what PO's need to know about architecture, why it's so important, and how they can help determine it's direction. A...

Ok Product Owners, how well do you know your flow? How well can you describe it to others? What's the limiting factor in your product, delivery, and even company? Unless you've created and shared a Value Stream Map, you really don't know. Understanding how work happens, where it bottlenecks, and how much time is wasted is extremely valuable to learn how to deliver value sooner. Customers won't car...

It's one of the core tenants of creating products in an agile way, and something Product Owners need to be keenly aware of, but what exactly is "working software" anyway? Some are confused by the term, opinions differ, and still, others think it's impossible or not enough. In this episode, the focus is on a practical definition and one that should apply to every story PO's and teams work on togeth...

There is almost an incalculable number of ways a Product Owner can feel stressed. It can be overwhelming if you do not find strategies and mindsets to deal with stress effectively. In this episode, Geoff Watts joins the show again to discuss his recent thoughts on why we feel stressed and what control we have over how we respond. This was also a listener suggested topic and one that is truly helpf...

When Product Owners are communicating with stories, the way they are written and told can help establish some clarity. The stories are only part of the puzzle when collaborating with others and there is certainly more than one way to craft them. If you've written them the same way before and are looking for some alternatives, in this episode you'll learn about some new formats, tweaks to existing...

There are a lot of Product Management skills that a great Product Owner needs to learn about. One of the best teachers of those skills is ProduxLabs CEO, Melissa Perri. She has a brand new book all about product roles, skills, strategy, and creating product-led organizations. All of these ideas are intended to help get you and your company out of the Build Trap, a place where customer success take...

What is a Product Owner to do when a story is too big to fit into a sprint? Or what about when a PO is working with an idea that will take some time to study and learn with the team? How do you treat these ideas? It's common to use the term Epic to describe a problem that is bigger than a story and in this episode, that's what we dig into. There are, however, many different takes, strategies, and...