Comments for John Peltier

Comment on Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best by Why the “Backlog Manager” fits best for Scrum focused ISVs — On Product Management

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:07:05 +0000

[...] Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best [...]

Comment on Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best by The “Backlog Manager” fits best for Scrum focused ISVs — On Product Management

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:06:06 +0000

[...] Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best [...]

Comment on Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best by Christian Almgren

Christian Almgren — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:52:18 +0000

Could not agree more. As coming from the Product Management world in an ISV I see the problem and with your post I got a greater understanding of why some people dont get what I mean. With a customer development world we just dont have the regular product management and all my views are no longer applicable. I never thought of that difference

Comment on Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best by Jon White

Jon White — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:26:37 +0000

One more point on the above (no comment edits?):

A good BM can handle more than one product consecutively.

Comment on Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best by Jon White

Jon White — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:24:31 +0000

I think you have hit the nail on the head here. For v1, market research and development are consecutive activities, where as once a product is in market, they become parallel. It is a risk for any business to expect one person to be able to do both well. Add in the operational side of product management and you have a very strong case for delegating one of those 3 tasks.

We have just created the concept of a Release Manager which is analogous to a BM in your post. This provides some nice thinking on when the BM role applies.

Comment on Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best by theprodmgr

theprodmgr — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:42:10 +0000

Very interesting post. I would argue that the concept of Product Manager really doesn’t exist in the Custom Software environment. As you stated, you really just need someone who can effectively communicate what the ONE customer wants. They aren’t out listening to the market etc.

In an ISV, my personal experience is that the Product Owner role can be filled by a qualified Business Analyst both for V1 and subsequent releases. This person has to work closely with the Product Manager, but once the initial set of “deliverables” have been defined, the BA (as the PO) can take over and work closely with the Development team. This means though that they have to know what the vision is for the product, understand the market it serves and the problems it solves.

I think regardless of V1 or future releases, the Product Manager does need to be involved and check in to make sure that things progress as they expect. They are also the escalation point for when the PO can’t resolve a question.

Comment on Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best by David Locke

David Locke — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:39:59 +0000

Your conception of the PM vs PO vs BM works wonderfully in the technology adoption lifecycle where a vendor does custom development, and then moves the product to the vertical market of which the B2B early adopter, the client, is a part. Once you start crossing the chasm, you shift from the BM to the PO. Thanks.

Comment on Thoughts on the Social Media scene in Atlanta by Adam Lazzara

Adam Lazzara — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 18:05:18 +0000

John, this is a great post as I often am drawing comparisons to the NYC scene since I have only been living in Atlanta now for a few months. The NYC scene sounds very similar to the Austin scene as it is populated by start up folks looking to network by building relationships to help foster their business. Atlanta DOES have a very corporate “inside” scene and that was the first thing I noticed when I first was looking for social media related events here. NYC has numerous events going on from a social/start-up perspective on a daily basis due to the wide variety of groups there. I’ve met some great people here in Atlanta already and I am definitely looking forward to the next ATLBashh, thanks for helping put that together!

Comment on ProdMgmtTalk: Product Manager vs. Product Owner by Patrick Masi

Patrick Masi — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:04:28 +0000

“One model is that product management is more market facing, while product owner is more inward facing.”

For all the reasons stated here and by the comments above, I totally agree and my experience shows the same. A sufficiently sized company needs that split between market-biased Product Manager and execution-biased Product Owner. It’s almost like a major/minor university degree. As a PM, I major in the market and minor in execution. Our PO majors in the product build out and minors in the market.

One question we run into seems unimportant but really causes headaches – exactly what should the reporting relationships for these positions be in an organization? PM is well-understood to be a function that should report direct to CEO or perhaps through marketing, but what about the product owner? Can they report to development without losing that important ability to “be the voice of the market”? Can they report to product management without sacrificing the Scrum team’s need to always be available? We haven’t really figured these questions out yet.

Comment on ProdMgmtTalk: Product Manager vs. Product Owner by Bill Bliss

Bill Bliss — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:00:16 +0000

Is any of this covered well in Pichler’s book?

http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Product-Management-Scrum-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321605780/

I haven’t read it yet.