Create customer lifetime value – Move beyond a transactional mentality and focus on the overall customer relationship over the solution’s life. Elaborate Stories – Stories are typically created before iteration execution but require ongoing elaboration. POs facilitate frequent conversations with their teams to resolve questions, manage dependencies, and communicate priorities that emerge as stories are implemented. This information also helps the team slice stories effectively to achieve increased velocity and shortened learning cycles. Every product owner faces a complex and unique set of challenges within their team. This provides each individual the opportunity to fill the role with different ambitions, skills, and insights. Your product ownership journey can take a variety of paths, and The Art of Agile Product Ownership is here to be your guide. Stream-aligned team – organized around the flow of work and has the ability to deliver value directly to the customer or end user. Every Product Owner needs to consider where they lie on this spectrum from internal to external, from BA to Product Manager

Stabilize and Operate describes the practices needed to make sure the solution is working well from a functional and non-functional perspective Understand end-user needs – Ensuring that solutions deliver maximum business benefit requires a deep understanding of the needs of end users. Product Management employs iterative elicitation techniques such as Lean UX, human-centered design (HCD), and journey mapping to evolve product strategy in alignment with these ever-changing needs. After exploration, the organization has the inputs to begin designing a solution, which often involves the following activities: Product Management continuously explores the Solution Context, gathering qualitative and quantitative insights about market dynamics and user preferences. These insights inform both business strategy and technical strategy and produce the hypotheses that fuel the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. Businesses need to balance their execution focus with a customer focus to help ensure that they are creating the right solutions, for the right customers, at the right time. APD is grounded in customer-centricity, design thinking, and Lean UX putting the customer at the center of every decision. It applies design thinking to ensure the solution is desirable, feasible, viable, and sustainable.

Responsibilities

Empathize with the customer – Solutions must deliver valuable experiences. This requires organizations to design each solution from the customer’s perspective, putting preconceived ideas aside. Product Management leads the way by utilizing personas, empathy interviews, empathy maps, and related tools to capture and communicate customer wants and needs. Enable operations– Product Management provides support and enablement to key functions in the operational value stream to ensure the full value of every release is realized. Marketing, sales, customer success, compliance, and channel partners, for example, receive assistance in preparing customers, stakeholders, and operations teams for product launches.

Ensure product completeness– Product management ensures that solutions meet a wide range of customer needs. ‘Whole solutions’ are designed from the customer’s perspective and comprise multiple features that together deliver complete, engaging end-user experiences. In this example, a mobile banking solution is delivered to external customers by a Mobile Banking Product Manager. The mobile banking app is built on a secure, compliant e-banking platform provided by a Digital Platform Product Manager. The core banking platform is built on scalable cloud infrastructure delivered by a Cloud Product Manager. Each oversees a solution that delivers a valuable product or service that is either consumed or further enhanced by the immediate customer. This scenario is especially common in the development of Large Solutions. Continuous Exploration promotes innovation and aligns with what should be built. Design Thinking continually explores customer and market needs, defining a Vision and Roadmap. Product Management engages directly with customers throughout the product life cycle. This ensures that the customer’s needs are built into product strategy from the start and remain reflected in released solutions as the customer’s needs change over time. This cookie is used to a profile based on user's interest and display personalized ads to the users.Ultimately, DevOps is a mindset, a culture, and a set of technical practices that provides solution elements to the customer without handoffs or too much external production and operations support. As illustrated in Figure 7, SAFe’s approach to DevOps is grounded in five concepts: Culture, Automation, Lean Flow, Measurement, and Recovery ( CALMR), briefly described below. Figure 7. SAFe’s CALMR approach to DevOps Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley, 2011. For most enterprises moving to Agile, this is a new–and typically full-time–role for each Agile Team. Each PO represents the needs of customers and the business within a particular Solution domain, typically co-represented by a Product Manager. Together, they ensure that product strategy and implementation remain connected throughout the value stream.

Think and feel like the customer – Apply empathy and strive to see the world from their customers’ point of view.

Cadence and Synchronization

Regardless of whether a solution is consumed internally or sold externally, Product Management is essential to its success. This article describes Product Management’s multi-faceted role in SAFe and how it enables the continuous, sustained delivery of value. Key Collaborations The Art of Agile Product Ownership is a beacon for current product owners, programmers who are ready to take the next step towards ownership, and analysts transitioning into the product space. This book helps you determine for yourself the best way to fill the product owner role so that you utilize your unique combination of skills. Product ownership is central to a successful Agile team, and after reading this book, you will be more than ready for the challenge. Know the customer – Value is determined by the customer; therefore, the PO is keenly aware of the needs of the people to whom their products are delivered. Customers may be internal or external to the enterprise and may have direct or indirect relationships with the PO. Whether they consume products, services, systems, APIs, platforms, or other solutions, customers’ wants, needs, and preferences are continually explored by the PO.

Align on outcomes – Product Management ensures that solutions deliver tangible business value. They collaborate directly with Customers, Business Owners, and, when appropriate, Solution Management to understand the market forces, desired economic outcomes, and broader solution vision influencing product strategy. Manage flexible roadmaps – Product strategy and vision get codified in roadmaps that guide implementation. As Product Management adjusts product strategy and vision in response to changing business objectives and customer needs over the product life cycle, the roadmaps they influence are also adjusted.Know the stakeholders – Product design and implementation must also reflect the needs of non-customer stakeholders. Business Owners, Lean Portfolio Management, Product Management, System Architects, and fellow POs, for example, rely on the cadence and quality of the team’s output. The PO identifies key stakeholders and balances their needs with those of the customer. DevOps aligns efforts across development, operations, and other business functions to achieve an optimal balance of speed and stability. Figure 6. DevOps fosters collaboration across all functions Measure describes the practices to quantify if the newly-released functionality provides the intended value