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What It Takes to Be an Effective Agile Scrum Product Owner – Take This Revealing Questionnaire!
More and more organizations are adopting the Agile Scrum methodology and associated best practices to enable IT to better adapt to market conditions, deliver valuable outcomes sooner, increase quality and customer satisfaction, and more. In fact, Agile Scrum best practices are now moving beyond IT and are being adopted across the enterprise.
With the escalating implementation of Agile Scrum within organizations, there is a corresponding rising demand for the Agile Scrum product owner role – an important and multi-faceted role that requires a wide range of skills. Let’s take a look at several key competencies that contribute to a product owner’s overall effectiveness and success…
The Key Competencies of an Effective Agile Scrum Product Owner
The ideal candidate for the Agile Scrum product owner role should be:
- A strategic thinker: understands the bigger picture for the product, as well as its vision, strategy, and roadmap; how the product fits into the organization’s overall mission and vision; and factors this information into decisions surrounding the product
- An effective communicator: communicates with different stakeholders, customers, and the Scrum team using the most appropriate method and style; is a skilled storyteller
- A collaborator: effectively collaborates with members of the Scrum team, customers, or other stakeholders to achieve common objectives
- A differentiator: helps stakeholders distinguish between needs and wants – what adds to value and what doesn’t
- A problem-solver: has good negotiating and conflict resolutions skill to address problems that are impeding progress or reducing the value of the team’s work and the resulting increments
- A teacher/facilitator: will use these skills when working with stakeholders beyond the Scrum team, such as conducting workshops with stakeholders. Product owners play a key role alongside the Scrum Master in helping the greater organization understand and adopt Agile and Scrum
- Customer-focused: maintains a focus on the customers and their outcomes and helps to ensure the entire Scrum team does so as well
- Decisive: is prepared to make decisions when needed so as not to slow the progress of the team, but also inspects the results of those decisions and adapts, if necessary
- Assertive: is able to assert authority as necessary, including being able to say ‘no’ when appropriate
- Open-minded: remains open to different perspectives and new ways of working as part of a self-managing team
How do you – or a candidate you are considering – measure up?
Take the assessment, below, that is part of Pink Elephant’s Agile Scrum Product Owner certification course. In the course, we provide a detailed self-assessment that measures the current state of an individual’s competencies against six different categories.
Here is a sampling of the self-assessment from the course:
- Effectiveness:
- Teams admire leaders who value their well-being and health. I take an active role in establishing a positive, safe, and mentally healthy working environment.
- I bring visions to reality by looking at a problem or the organization from a conceptualizing perspective (forming an idea or picture), rather than just looking at the day-to-day operations.
- Facilitator:
- I clarify my role to participants as a facilitator (not an active participant) of the group to help them achieve the event goals, objectives, and outcomes.
- When the participants are off track, I interrupt and use information radiators to bring people back to the event goals, objectives, and outcomes required.
- Teaching and Training:
- I know my subject well when I teach and train, with an effort to be the expert, but also with awareness I am not a know-it-all and that learning is usually mutual (i.e., two-way).
- I am continually probing and being aware of the environment to maintain energy and focus.
- Communication:
- In all situations, I practice establishing an environment of transparency and trust by being consistent, responsible, and truthful.
- When a conversation requires a knowledge transfer and/or understanding, I make use of visual information radiators as much as possible (i.e., a picture says a thousand words).
- Listening:
- I have made a deep commitment to listen intently to others so that I can identify and clarify the purpose and passion of the group.
- I listen to understand the other person before I reply. This means listening to understand the other person’s concepts, rationale, and/or problem without jumping to the solution.
- Organizational Change Management:
- I feel prepared to help establish an Agile culture by distinguishing between changes to processes and tools, as well as the transitions required by people.
- I am aware of different types of resistance and approaches for managing that resistance as part of the transition.
Interested in learning more? We invite you to view Pink’s Agile portfolio of certification courses and register for the upcoming Agile Scrum Product Owner certification course.
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