Practical Product Management for Product Owners: Creating Winning Products with the Professional Product Owner Stances(The Professional Scrum Series)

Hone Agile Product Owner Behaviors that Lead to Marketplace Winners Organizations pour vast resources into building new products and services. Yet too many are poorly conceived, don't delight (or even satisfy) customers, and fail in the marketplace. The solution is more effective agile product ownership and product management. This book is an expert guide to the behaviors, stances, and practices of world-class agile product development, reflecting deep in-the-trenches experience from world-renowned experts. Chris Lukassen and Robbin Schuurman introduce powerful tools, ideas, and skills for delivering superior products and services, and for avoiding pitfalls that keep you from seeing what customers really need and want. Learn through a start-to-finish, Scrum-based case study, drawing on concepts the authors created for their breakthrough Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner-Advanced (PSPO-A) training course. This innovative approach has already helped thousands of product owners excel--and it can transform the way you create products. Replace negative product owner behaviors with approaches that lead to excellence Represent customers more empathetically and effectively Connect customers, values, and features more coherently Tell better stories, set clearer goals, and create more valuable roadmaps Innovate business models, run better experiments, and scale products more successfully Make more successful decisions, involve the right people, and rely on better data Become a great agile collaborator, across governance, budgeting, contracting, and beyond Influence customers, users, stakeholders, and teams to improve your overall effectiveness Optimize every organizational role related to product ownership Product owners, managers, and team leads will find this guide indispensable along with Agile/Scrum coaches, consultants, and executives wanting to generate more value from product management across the organization.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Dave West     xvii Introduction     xxi   Part I.   The Stances of the Product Owner     1 Chapter 1. Agile Product Management     3       Is It Product Owner or Product Manager? 3       What Is Product Management? 4       Working in a Product-Led, Sales-Led, or Marketing-Led Organization 6       What Is a Product Owner? 7       Different Types of Product Owners 9   Chapter 2. Introducing the Product Owner Stances     3       The Misunderstood Stances of a Product Owner 17       The Preferred Stances of a Product Owner 27   Part I Summary     35   Part II. The Customer Representative     37 Chapter 3. How to Identify and Define Product     39       Introducing the Customer Representative 39       What Is a Product? 43   Chapter 4. Building Customer Empathy     49       Talking to Customers 49       Observing Customers 49       Effectively Dealing with Biases When Collaborating with Customers 51   Chapter 5. Capture Your Customer Insights Via Personas     55       User Personas 55       Creating Personas 56   Chapter 6. Identifying and Expressing Customer Value     61       The Functional Elements of Value 63       Emotional Elements of Value 64       Life-Changing Elements of Value 64       Social-Impact Element of Value 65   Chapter 7. Connecting Product Features to Outcomes and Impacts     67       Connecting Goals, Impacts, Outcomes, and Features 68   Part II Summary     73   Part III. The Visionary     77 Chapter 8. Creating and Communicating Product Vision     79       Introducing: The Visionary 79       Connecting the Product Vision to the Company Mission, Vision, and Values 83       A Product Vision Aligned with the Company Mission and Vision 87       Elements of an Inspiring Product Vision 90   Chapter 9. Communicating the Product Vision Effectively     93       The 3x3 Storytelling Framework 95       The Power of Reasoning 99       Make It SEXI 100   Chapter 10. Crafting Product Goals That Align Stakeholders and Teams     103       What Is a Product Goal? 104       Characteristics of Great Product Goals 106       How to Create Product Goals 108       Inspect and Adapt Product Goals 109       Having Multiple Product Goals: Is That an Option? 110   Chapter 11. Creating the Right Product Roadmap for Your Audience     113       Introduction to Product Roadmaps 113       Types of Product Roadmaps 117       Roadmap 1: The Goal-Oriented Roadmap 118       Roadmap 2: The Now-Next-Later Roadmap 120       Roadmap 3: The User Story Map 122       Roadmap 4: The Visual Roadmap 124       Roadmap 5: The Gantt Chart Roadmap 126       Eleven Tips for Roadmap Creation 128   Chapter 12. Identification of Company Value and Impact     131       Understanding Company Value and Impact 131       Expressing Company Impact 137       Key Value Area 1: Current Value 139       Key Value Area 2: Unrealized Value 141       Key Value Area 3: Time to Market 145       Key Value Area 4: Ability to Innovate 147   Chapter 13. Maximizing Value through Effective Pricing Strategies and Tactics     151       Introduction to Product Pricing 151       The Product Pricing Process 153   Part III Summary     165   Part IV. The Experimenter     169 Chapter 14. Driving Inside-Out Product Innovation     171       Introducing: The Experimenter 171       Inside-Out Innovation Sources 175   Chapter 15. Driving Outside-In Product Innovation     183       Outside-In Innovation Sources 183       Market Segmentation 184   Chapter 16. Thinking Differently: Driving Business Model Innovation     189       Market Analysis and Trends 189       Getting Inspiration from Other Companies 191       The Impact on Your Business 196       The Return of the Business Model Canvas 197   Chapter 17. Selecting Product Experiments to Run     199       The Truth Curve: Select the Right Experiments and Tests 199       Experimentation Techniques Explained 203   Chapter 18. How to Design and Evaluate Experiments and Tests     215       Defining Hypothesis 216       Capture Learnings 218   Chapter 19. Approaches for Scaling Successful Products and Teams     221       Scaling Approaches for People and Teams 221       Typical Antipattern for Scaling People and Teams 224       A Better Approach for Scaling People and Teams 227       Approaches to Scaling the Product or Service 229       Focus on the Product First, Then on People and Teams 230       Eight Effective Strategies for Scaling a Product 232       How Product Owners Contribute to Product Scaling 235   Part IV Summary     237   Part V.  The Decision Maker     241 Chapter 20. Improving Accountability, Maturity, and Authority     243       Introducing: The Decision Maker 243   Chapter 21. Evaluating Your Product Decisions     255       Product Management: A Game of Poker or Chess? 255       Evaluating Decisions in an Honest and Transparent Way 258   Chapter 22. Make Better Decisions: Thinking in Bets     259       The Buddy System or Decision Pod 260       Accepting Uncertainty in Decision Making 261   Chapter 23. Navigating Product, Process, and Team Dilemmas and Decisions     263       Making Choices 263       Navigating Dilemmas 265   Chapter 24. Improving the Speed and Quality of Decisions     269       The Cost of Delaying Decisions 269       Fast Decisions Are More Successful than Slow Decisions 270       Special Snowflake Syndrome 273       Why You Should Probably Make Decisions Fast(er) 274       How to Speed Up Your Decision Making 274       Empowered Product Owners 275   Part V Summary     277   Part VI. The Collaborator     281 Chapter 25. How Agile Governance Affects Product Owners     283       Introduction to the Collaborator 283       Introducing Agile Governance 287       Organizational Governance Entails Many Elements 291       Effectively Dealing with Governance 295   Chapter 26. Product Budgeting Done in an Agile Way     297       Three Horizons 298       Budgeting Is Like Product Backlog Management 300       A Strategy and Market Perspective on Budgeting 304   Chapter 27. Creating Contracts That Enable Great Product Ownership and Teamwork     309       What Is a Contract? 310       Who Takes the Risk? 313       Two-Stage Contracts 314       Joe's Bucket 316       Money for Nothing 317       Change for Free 318       Elements of an Agile Contract 319   Part VI Summary     323   Part VII. The Influencer     327 Chapter 28. Stakeholder Management in Complex Environments     329       Introducing: The Influencer 329       Definition of Stakeholder 333       Stakeholder Classification/Categorization 335       Information and Insights to Gather on Stakeholders 338       The Influence of the Stakeholder 340   Chapter 29. Tools for Stakeholder Classification and Grouping     343       The Stakeholder Map 344       The Stakeholder Radar 351       Alternative Stakeholder Identification and Grouping Techniques 357   Chapter 30. Applying Stakeholder Management Strategies and Tactics in Practice     359       Creating a Communication Strategy 359       Tips for Improving Your Stakeholder Management in Practice 362   Chapter 31. How to Influence Stakeholders on All Levels     369       Being a Lyrebird 369       The Process of Communication 371       Four Layers of Communication 374       Building Relationships with Stakeholders 375       Adapting Your Tune to Your Audience 382   Chapter 32. Mastering the Art of No to Optimize Value Creation for the Product     387       What Makes Saying No So Hard? 388       Five Steps toward Saying No Effectively 389       The Jedi Mind Trick 392   Chapter 33. Negotiating With Stakeholders, Customers, and Users     393        Be a Mirror 394       Label Emotions 395       Getting to Yes! 396       How to Tell If a Yes Is Real 398       Bend Their Reality 398       Create the Illusion of Control 400       Guarantee Execution 400       Bargain Hard 401       Find the Black Swan 402    Part VII Summary     405   Closing Summary     409   Index     413  

About the Author :
Chris Lukassen has been active in product management for 20+ years, and co-created Scrum.org's Professional Scrum Product Owner - Advanced course. He currently trains product managers in Scrum, leadership, user experience, and metrics. Robbin Schuurman is a product leader, consultant, Professional Scrum Trainer, and leader of Xebia's Product Management Academy. He supports organizations in digital, agile, and product transformations; and helps product owners grow customer impact, improve agility, and shorten time-to-learn. Lukassen and Schuurman co-founded The Value Maximizers.