Are you an agile Product Owner? Here are 20 tips for improving your work and the product.

1. 20 Tips for Product Owners
„2014 New Year‘s Edition“
Björn Schotte // @BjoernSchotte // bjoern.schotte@mayflower.de
MAYFLOWER GmbH
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.de

2. Have a compelling
Agile Product
Vision
Link: http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/product-vision/the-product-vision-board/

3. Define your
Personas in a
„good enough“ way
Link: http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-innovation/persona-template-for-agile-productmanagement/

4. Use Story Mapping
for visualizing and defining Most
Important Stories
Link: http://leanagilechange.com/leanagilewiki/index.php?title=Story_Mapping

5. Learn to say
„NO“

6. Invest in
Continuous Delivery
(and release often)
Link: http://puppetlabs.com/blog/continuous-delivery-vs-continuous-deployment-whats-diff

7. Build KANO user
surveys
right into the software
Link: http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2013/07/using-the-kano-model-to-prioritize-product-development/

8. Test the business
value of a story by
hypotheses
(and throw them away if they don‘t succeed)

9. Use Lean Startup
philosophy
even if you‘re Corporate
Link: http://theleanstartup.com/

10. Regularly predict
release with
Product Burndown
Chart
Link: http://www.sw-engineering-candies.com/blog-1/howtouseproduct-burndown-chartsandsprint-burndownchartsnotonlyinscrumprojects

11. Never ever use
Velocity as a KPI for
rewarding/punishing
the team

12. Trust the team
(and give them slack time to create
new things)

13. Groom the backlog
with the team
(at least weekly)
Link: http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/backlog-grooming.html

14. The higher the quality
of a User Story, the
better the estimation
(but don‘t over-spec!)

15. Integrate UX/Design
the Agile Way

16. Commit yourself
to retrospectives
with the team
Link: http://pragprog.com/book/dlret/agile-retrospectives

17. Let the team speak
with customers
directly
(less bugs in the software, higher quality)

18. Use Personal Kanban
to organize yourself
(or try GTD)
Link: http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/

19. use NPS to get regular
feedback from
stakeholders and
customers
(and care for the passives and promoters)
Link: http://www.netpromotersystem.com/book/index.aspx

20. Invest in removing
technical debt
(better quality, less bugs in the future)

21. Throw a party
for your team!

22. Have
suggestions?
@BjoernSchotte