The overworked product owner

It has been my experience that most technology problems are not technology problems but problems with people obscured by technology. Many of my professional headaches in business are not caused by technology behaving unexpectedly; rather, they are a product of people behaving unexpectedly. It does not help that modern business puts so much pressure on people that they do not have time to sort through crises in a rational manner. This week on the blog, I wanted to discuss the overworked product owner you will run across in your career.

It amazes me how knowledge and power are concentrated in different places at the firm. Executives who seem to be very good at kissing up and kicking down know nothing about the inner workings of their business. They understand accounting but not the actual operations of the company. The people who understand how the business operates are busy ensuring the invoicing is done and the organization is operating. These people make perfect product owners, but they are also a rare commodity, so executives often ask these people to do double duty managing multiple projects. TThey thinkthat they are so good with one project the other projects will go just as smoothly.

This is penny-wise and pound-foolish. With attention divided between multiple projects, the product owner will not be able to focus on any project, and all of them will suffer. This will create situations where the user stories will not get written promptly, or there will not be enough user stories to keep the team working efficiently. This is going to lead to conflict because the scrum master will accuse the product owner of not doing the necessary work and the product owner will get upset with the scrum master for not delivering his vision soon enough.

I suggest you bring this to the attention of upper management right away because they should know a project is failing long before a deadline passes. Otherwise, it will be your fault that a project fails.

Until next time.