A few days ago I published a blog post with resources for ScrumMasters. I was saying how, since it’s a relatively new role, it requires new skills to get it right, so people often ask me for learning resources. Well, the same goes for the Product Owner role.
In the past, things were clear: we had product managers and business analysts. All of a sudden, Scrum brought into the spotlight a new role for managing a product, the Product Owner. And it too requires additional skills. To help you overcome the initial challenge, in this post I share a few resources that you’ll hopefully find useful.
The Product Owner Role
- Product Owner
The role, as described in the Agile Atlas. - What does a Product Owner do?
A view by my colleague Iuliana. - Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell (video)
A very good video, highly recommended. - The Product Owner poster
A broader view of the role. Comes with a nice poster. - Agile Product Management with Scrum (book)
The role in depth, managing the product, working with the team. - Can Product Owner and Scrum Master be Combined?
Is it advisable to combine the two roles?
Managing the product
- User Stories Applied (book)
How to write stories, work with users, estimate and plan work. - The Lean Startup (book)
Reduce the product risk by investing in minimum viable products. - Executable Specifications
A recent approach to specifying requirements, that emphasizes collaboration and automation. - 5 tips for better user stories
“Use personas”, “limit story size” and others. - INVEST in Good Stories, and SMART Tasks
Stories should be independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small and testable. - Patterns for Splitting User Stories
Learn how to make stories small enough to fit into a sprint. - It’s all in how you slice
Split your features into user stories based on priority and coherence.
Working with the Scrum Team
- A developer about Product Owner
How the PO role is viewed by a team member. - Tips for Effective Backlog Grooming
The grooming meeting is possibly the most important one for the Product Owner. - Release Planning in Scrum
How to handle longer-range planning. - Scaling the Product Owner
How to work on bigger projects. - Feature teams
Learn the agile way of structuring teams. - Agile Estimating and Planning (book)
The project management side of the role. - Sprint Planning and Sprint Review
Details about the two meetings that start and end the sprint.
Working with Customers
- Innovation Games (book)
Make decisions during interactive activities with your customers (“serious games”). - Personas
Model your users needs, for a more relevant product. - Product owners and web analytics
Gather data to better understand your users. - 100 Things You Should Know About People: #52: People Create Mental Models
Use mental models to understand your customer’s worldview.
User Experience
- The design of everyday things (book)
A classic on product design and a precursor of the usability movement. - Don’t make me think (book)
The key to a consumer product’s success is making it intuitive to use. - Lean UX (book)
A new discipline combining agile, lean startup and user experience. - Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to Agile development
The title says it all.
Other resources
- Scrum Guide
The guide is written by Scrum’s creators: Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. - Succeeding with Agile (book)
One of the reference books about Scrum and Agile. - Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love(book)
“Why do some products make the leap to greatness while others do not?” - List of books
I’ve created a list of books for Product Owners on Amazon.
Our services
We’ve got a few workshops where you could learn more about the Product Owner role:
- Acceptance Test Driven Development Workshop (2 days)
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training (2 days)
- User Stories for Agile Requirements Workshop (1 day)
- Agile Software Development using Scrum (2 days)
- Product Inception Workshop (5 hours)
We could also offer you in-house assessment, coaching and consultancy on your needs. Our coaches have helped many Product Owners better understand their responsibilities, create a roadmap and the Product Backlog and prepare for the Scrum meetings. Contact us for more details.
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What are your preferred books or blog posts? Let me know about them in the comments below.
