Hello, everyone. Quick heads up before we start today's episode. The Global Agile Summit is happening on May the 4th. Yes, May the 4th. And even with a big blowout Star Wars party, you have to join. It will be online and it's, like always, free to attend. We have four tracks this year that I'm really excited about. And I think you will too. Stick around to the end of the episode to know what they are. If you want to check it out already now, you can check it out at bit.ly forward slash global agile 26. That's the numerals two and six at the end. So one more time, that's bit.ly forward slash global agile 26, all one word, all lowercase, and two and six are the numerals two and six. So stick around till the end of the episode and I'll tell you what's in store. But for now, on to today's episode. Hello, everybody. It is Friday, DGIF, as they say. It is also product owner episode this week with Viktor Glinka. Hey, Viktor, welcome back. Hey, Vasco. Thanks. It's been a long week and I'm happy to be here again. I am happy the week is over, but I'm even more happy that we get to talk about the product owner role because it is such an important role, just as we were talking about yesterday on the success question. So let's dive into that right away. We'll talk about great product owners in a minute. But first, share with us, Victor, what might have been potentially the worst product owner anti-pattern you've witnessed in your career. Yeah, I think our listeners know product owner anti-patterns. and I cannot define the worst I would say the worst is just not empowered product owner I truly believe every person has ability to learn how to become a great product owner if they are empowered and trusted by the organization and I have so many examples when people be having the right knowledge, right skills, but just not allowed to apply them. And the other way around. So let me know which path we'd like to take now. Well, either way, right? Like, let's start with, when you think about these anti-patterns, like one of the things we want to explore here is how does this start to show? Because the product owners are not going to come to us and say, hey, I'm not empowered, right? Like it's going to show through behaviors, attitudes, decisions, etc. So in your experience, if we're a Scrum Master that is just new to an organization and a team, how would we know if our product owner is indeed empowered or not? First of all, the goal of the product owner, the main purpose is to maximize return on investments. And if you see if your product owner doesn't care about that or doesn't think about that, That's the first red flag. Second, if the product owner is not empowered, you will sense pressure coming from him because someone also pushes him. So you will hear words like deadlines, commitments, but not about return on investments and outcomes. So that already should be enough for you to understand what's going wrong and to show your own curiosity to find a way. And of course, the next question is, okay, but how do we work with these product owners? What have you learned about working with product owners that are not, for whatever reason, feeling empowered? Well, I learned that at first you should accept the rules of the game, but also invite product owners and help them to step out of their limitations organizational limitations So in one of the examples one of the product owners I worked with he was struggling to give the direction to the team because he worked with stakeholders that just wanted him to deliver their features. And it was a healthy situation for everyone, for the team, for him. You mean unhealthy situation? Unhealthy. Unhealthy situation, yes. So I challenged him a bit and invited to share share his own thoughts, his own vision about the product. And he was afraid to, first, he was afraid to communicate that to the team because he thought he was not allowed to. He was afraid to talk to stakeholders because he thought, oh, he's just... So basically, this product, it was a he, I hear. so he was basically telling himself I'm not allowed all the time yes he was a middleman but at the same time inside him there was a sparkle a passion about the product and I just helped him to to uncover that through using just a simple tool I said hey just lay down on the paper here's product vision canvas let's do it together so just take those thoughts out of your head that was the first step and second when his thoughts when his vision was written he started thinking about the next step what if I just show them to the stakeholders what if I tell them there is a better way than just just delivering their features? What if I show them that there could be more value? So that's the way how you can help product owners to grow. Yeah, and the product vision canvas is such an easy tool that if we feel that there's that spark, it's an easy way to get started at uncovering and expressing that spark. Yeah, I mean, this fear, This fear of not being allowed, it's an illusion. In fact, you can do more. You can always do more, just try. Absolutely. Nobody will fire you just for a suggestion of a certain improvement. And talking about trying, there are some people out there that are exactly what we look for, amazing product owners. So, Victor, share with us the best product owner you've ever worked with. How did they work? Yeah. So, first of all, they are very curious. So, they always try to find a way how to do things differently, how to simplify them. and they ask questions like, what if? What if? How can we do it differently? It's more like a personal trade. But if you see that product owner, you see that they have certain skills. They can negotiate. They are good negotiators with teams because they have to delegate a lot, especially if they work in a scale setup, their work shifts from clarification to prioritization. And they also have to negotiate with the stakeholders because yeah plans are changing constantly changing and you have to explain well why you took this decision instead of that decision They also have very good visualization skills. in one of the examples I can give you product owner during negotiations with stakeholders provided a work composition chart it told them you see more than 50% of our work is technical debt so that's the reason why we cannot deliver your features so if you want us to bring key useful outcomes, first we need to finish that part. That means that they are also great systems thinkers, so they understand dynamics, root causes, and they do not optimize locally. Yeah, what else? Help me out. I think these are key qualities. Brepo, you can add something from your side. Yeah, I agree with everything that you said. I really like that because you talked about many things that lead to the end point, which is tools that the product owners own and are fluent in that help them with negotiation. Because for me, that's one of the key difficulties of the PO job is that you are in constant negotiation, right? Your negotiation with the stakeholders, with the teams, with the customers, if you get exposed to the customers, and ultimately with yourself, because you have to make decisions all the time regarding where to go with the product. And the visualization and communication skills are like absolutely must for product owners. And I really like how you talked about the visualization as in the context of data, right? Because very often the product owner might think that they don't need to really understand how the team works or how they manage their work. They just need to have the backlog up to date, which is a fair assumption, but obviously not really the whole truth. But when you understand how the team works, you can bring data to the negotiation of where to focus, right? And you can get that data to inform your own decisions, right? Like we're spending too much time on maintenance. Hey, why is this happening? I'll talk to the teams. I'll work with the scrum masters. So that ability to use data and communication skills for the negotiation aspect, which is the key aspect of the product owner job, I think is very important. Yeah. I would add on top of that data stands for rational aspects of negotiation but emotional aspects are important as well so I'm talking about sharing your passion with development teams telling them your personal reasons why you want to build that why you want to improve that so show your own vulnerability and I would say infecting everyone with these positive vibes you first feel yourself something comes to my mind which is never described in any framework I think that's also important skill i called it mindfulness because product owners um constantly exposed to pressure um as as i said they have to deal with almost everything at the moment and it's important to make your peace with with your decisions i mean you made a decision move on Don't regret about that. Calm down. Yeah And we can always learn right Like it okay to make the wrong decisions if we can learn from them But in order to do that there another skill which is to be able to be data validation experiment product owner because that what allows us to get that insight that intuition that will give us better decisions in the future everybody makes mistakes but being very careful and systematic about learning from those mistakes also makes for amazing product owners yeah that's true totally agree with that victor it's been a great week we're getting close to the end though but before we go where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing well i could say i'm not a public person i just have a regular LinkedIn profile. That's it. So please visit it, reach out to me if you want, and we can discuss anything. Absolutely. Everybody reach out and ask a few follow-up questions. Learn from each other, because that's how we learn as a community. Victor, thank you very much for being with us and for your generosity with your time and your knowledge. Thanks a lot to you and to your listeners. It was my pleasure to share my experience with all of you guys. Hi there, friends. Thanks for sticking around till the end of the episode. So let me tell you what's coming. On May 4th, we're running the Global Agile Summit. It will be online and I want you there. This year, we have four tracks and each one is built around real conversations with practitioners. No slides, no keynote theater, just honest interviews with people doing the work, just like you. The first track is AI in organizations, where practitioners show what actually works. No hype, just AI that makes your Monday better. Happy Monday, everybody. And then we have the people track. Honest conversations about putting humans at the center of how we work and keeping them there. And third is agile in construction. And yes, I really mean brick and mortar construction. Lean and agile actual job sites. Build leaders removing waste. Teams transforming how buildings get built. Stay tuned for what I think will be a super track on Agile in Construction. And the fourth track is Agile in Gaming, how game studios ship without burning out. Agile inside the creative pressure cooker. Over the years, we've had more than 12,000 participants since 2017, the time of the first summit organized with the podcast. And this year, we're making it easier than ever to join. You can register for free and get access to the summit sessions live during the event week. That's May 4th to May 6th. Or you can grab the practitioner pass and get immediate access to last year's keynotes from Jurgen Apelo, Goiko Adzic and Mirete Kangas. Right now, even before the summit starts. So grab your practitioner pass and start learning today. Head on over to bit.ly forward slash global agile 26. That's two, six, the numerals two and six. Sign up and I'll see you on May the 4th. And one more time, here we go. bit.ly forward slash global agile 26. All lowercase, all one word and 26. That's the numeral two and the numeral C. I'll see you on the conference floor
