58
votes
How to motivate a team when you have nothing to offer but equity?
If you aren't paying people, you really shouldn't expect them to stay around. If you want to give someone equity in exchange for payment; it should be a large amount of equity, and it should be ...
- 929
26
votes
Accepted
Is the Product Owner allowed to be at the Daily Scrum event?
Product Owners Are Silent Observers in Daily Stand-Ups
In the quoted description, the word participate has the connotation of "taking an active part." The Product Owner should attend, but should not ...
- 50.3k
22
votes
Accepted
Who does a product owner typically report to?
The Product Owner is the person who is directly accountable to business stakeholders for the product and ideally is herself a senior business stakeholder or a nominated representative of a department ...
- 6,295
22
votes
Help - Technical team does not want to work in agile way
You don't make any mention of a Scrum Master in your Question, so I'm going to assume that either s/he doesn't exist or isn't helpful. If not, make sure you involve the Scrum Master! It's his/her job ...
- 14.8k
17
votes
What does a Product Owner do if they disagree with the CEO's direction on product strategy?
The PO is the owner of the product, but that doesn't mean they can do watever they want with the product. At the end of the day, they represent the needs and the wants of all stakeholders.
Inevitably, ...
- 15.2k
16
votes
Accepted
How can we register the technical debt in Scrum?
Scrum Exposes Technical Debt Through Forecasts & Estimates
As a general rule, technical debt increases the cost of future work on the product. So, even if you don't explicitly keep track of the ...
- 50.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Should a Product Owner start testing while an item is in code review
The answer depends on whether this slows down or speeds up the process.
How many of the bugs she found were discovered during the Code Review phase?
If they were all discovered during the Code ...
- 4,542
15
votes
Should the Product Owner dictate what info the UI needs to display?
My question is, to what extent should the PO describe the requirements of a UI?
To the extent that the designers know what to design and the programmers know what to program. In your example, "as a ...
- 8,495
15
votes
Accepted
Should I leave building the database for the end?
It is worrying that you have no why part to your user stories. This is an important element of the user story format as it allows us to evaluate the stories and to prioritise them. It appears that you ...
- 19.5k
15
votes
Help - Technical team does not want to work in agile way
That is a frustrating situation Chris. From your question, it doesn't sound like the team can't develop things in smaller pieces, but rather that they won't. I base this on the fact that it sounds ...
- 16.9k
15
votes
Should the Product Owner be from our organization or the company we are contracting with?
And I'm going to take the middle ground between Bogdan and Thomas...
Whichever side has the more competent PO.
Bogdan already listed the responsibilities of a PO. To (over)simplify it in a single ...
- 14.8k
14
votes
Accepted
Should the Product Owner be from our organization or the company we are contracting with?
There is no canonical answer to this question, although as a rule of thumb, it would be better for the PO to be from the client side, not the contractor side.
The Scrum Guide says this about the PO ...
- 15.2k
13
votes
Accepted
Conflict between priorities and skillsets in the backlog
The Scrum Guide does not talk about prioritizing the Product Backlog. Instead, it talks about ordering the Product Backlog. Priority is only one factor that can be used to determine the ordering of ...
- 19.4k
12
votes
Accepted
Should a Product Owner be present for all retrospectives?
Ideally the Product Owner will be present and will find the retrospective both interesting and rewarding.
However, if the Product Owner does not see their value in technical conversations then there ...
- 19.5k
12
votes
Is the Product Owner allowed to be at the Daily Scrum event?
Yes, you absolutely want your PO at the Daily Scrum.
First off remember that the Scrum Guide is something like 17 pages and only covers the broadest brush strokes.
The product owner is part of the ...
- 12.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Product Owner is requesting a "confidence check" for reaching the MVP - How to in a Scrum project?
While such a confidence check is nothing that you'd read about in Scrum Guide I don't see it as something that violates Scrum in any way. It is, in fact, answering a different question: the one about ...
- 19.9k
12
votes
Is Scrum actually suitable for all kinds of projects?
To your overall question, while Scrum can be applied in most projects, it is not necessarily the best approach for some projects. That said, it is well suited to complex problems that require ...
- 16.9k
11
votes
How to motivate a team when you have nothing to offer but equity?
Lots of good answers already, but one thing I think may be missing is customer feedback.
Developers will initially be enthusiastic at solving technical problems, but to sustain their enthusiasm they ...
- 19.5k
11
votes
ex-Development manager as a Product Owner
I think the timing is important.
During the daily scrum, he needs to focus on the "what".
During the rest of the day, if he feels his experience (to juniors) is valuable, then there's no ...
- 4,542
11
votes
Showing the benefit of Product Goals and Sprint Goals?
This is a multi-faceted question, so I'll try to provide something helpful step-by-step.
First, the Scrum Guide is just a guide, but it is the definitive guide on Scrum. Furthermore, it has been built ...
- 16.9k
10
votes
How to decide what features should be in MVP?
I use MoSCoW prioritisation with clients (Must, Should, Could, Won't) and build developments around that. If the client would cancel the release if 'X' feature wasn't delivered, or if there is no ...
- 316
10
votes
Accepted
How to deal with a Product Owner who refuses to write user stories?
TL;DR
You're not wrong for writing the stories; it may be wrong in continuing to do so without change
Scrum doesn't say PO has got to write product backlog items or that they be user stories
...
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10
votes
How to motivate a team when you have nothing to offer but equity?
Equity only?
Well, you haven't made it clear just how "good" (your word) the equity is, but yes, likely the lack of anything tangible in terms of compensation is one of the factors involved here. But ...
- 435
9
votes
Accepted
How to surface P.O. dysfunction in a retro
Waiting for the Product Owner to be away before having the conversation is not a good Scrum approach.
It is better to have an open discussion as a team and resolve the problem with everyone present.
...
- 19.5k
9
votes
Should I leave building the database for the end?
US3 and US4 seem to be the same thing to me. If you need to display the last 5 messages, then that means saving them somewhere, so US3 should somehow deal with that. If US3 does, then US4 is redundant ...
- 15.2k
9
votes
Scrum Team and Product Owner working against each other
She does not give acceptance criteria
This is not a problem if the Product Owner is happy to talk through the stories with the team and clear up any details. The team can even create their own ...
- 19.5k
9
votes
How to manage a failed sub team inside a scrum team
You asked in terms of scrum, so that is how I'll answer. However, there are a number of red flags in your question that lead me to believe you aren't actually doing scrum (and I am far from a scrum ...
- 3,640
9
votes
Help - Technical team does not want to work in agile way
I'm a developer working with legacy code on scrum, and let me tell you, i think they're right in their ways, because i do the same. Let me explain my case, be aware though i'm what people consider a ...
- 207
9
votes
What does a Product Owner do if they disagree with the CEO's direction on product strategy?
State your case, CEO decides, you execute decision like your job depends on it.
- 37.1k
8
votes
Accepted
Influence code quality as Scrum Product Owner
The Product Owner has responsibility for the backlog and the development team has responsibility for delivery. However, in Scrum we work as a team and there is nothing to stop the Product Owner ...
- 19.5k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible