Book Notes #22: Agile Product Management with Scrum by Roman Pichler

Agile Product Management with Scrum book uses real-world examples to demonstrate how product owners can create successful products with Scrum.

Title: Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love
Author: Roman Pichler
Year: 2010
Pages: 160

In Agile Product Management with Scrum, leading Scrum consultant Roman Pichler uses real-world examples to demonstrate how product owners can create successful products with Scrum. 

Agile Product Management with Scrum describes a broad range of agile product management practices, including making agile product discovery work, taking advantage of emergent requirements, creating a minimal marketable product, leveraging early customer feedback, and working closely with the development team.

As a result, I gave this book a rating of 8.0/10.

For me, a book with a note 10 is one I consider reading again every year. Among the books I rank with 10, for example, is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Overview of Agile Product Management with Scrum

Benefitting from Pichler’s extensive experience, in Agile Product Management with Scrum you’ll learn how Scrum product ownership differs from traditional product management and how to avoid and overcome the common challenges that Scrum product owners face.

In Agile Product Management with Scrum, Roman Pichler provides a comprehensive guide to using the Scrum framework to manage product development.

Agile Product Management with Scrum covers key concepts and best practices for creating and managing a product backlog, planning and conducting sprints, and delivering a successful product.

One key takeaway from Agile Product Management with Scrum is the importance of having a clear product vision and goals. Pichler emphasizes the need for a shared understanding of what the product should achieve and how it will benefit customers.

This helps to guide decision-making throughout the development process and ensures that everyone is working towards a common goal.

Another important lesson from Agile Product Management with Scrum is the need for regular and effective communication. Pichler stresses the importance of regular meetings, such as sprint planning and retrospectives, to keep everyone informed and aligned on the progress of the project. 

He also emphasizes the importance of clear and open communication between the product owner, the development team, and stakeholders.

Pichler also highlights the importance of flexibility and adaptability in product development.

Scrum is an iterative and incremental framework, and Pichler stresses the importance of being able to adapt to changes and learning from feedback during the development process.

This helps to ensure that the final product meets the needs of customers and is successful in the marketplace.

My Book Highlights & Quotes

“… The Product Owner is the one and only person responsible for managing the Product Backlog and ensuring the value of the work the team performs. This person maintains the Product Backlog and ensures that it is visible to everyone…”

“… Product marketers tend to be outward-facing; their primary responsibility is to understand the market, manage the product roadmap, and look after the cumulative profits across releases. Product managers tend to be inward-facing; their responsibilities consist of detailed feature descriptions, prioritization, and collaboration with the development team. In Scrum, the product owner takes on all of these responsibilities…”

“… As the product owner, your responsibility is to make sure the product backlog is well groomed—its items prioritized and its high-priority items detailed—prior to the sprint planning meeting. You will also be expected to attend the sprint planning meeting in order to clarify requirements and answer questions…”

“… A product roadmap should state for each version the projected launch date, the target customers and their needs, and the top three to five features…”

“… The product owner and Scrum Master roles complement each other: The product owner is primarily responsible for the “what”—creating the right product. The Scrum Master is primarily responsible for the “how”—using Scrum the right way…”

“… Whenever a requirement is entered into the backlog, ensure that the related customer need is properly understood. Ask why a requirement is necessary and how it benefits the customer. Do not make the mistake of blindly copying requirements into the product backlog, as this creates an inconsistent and unmanageable wish list…”

“… The product owner is a visionary who can envision the final product and communicate the vision. The product owner is also a doer who sees the vision through to completion. This includes describing requirements, closely collaborating with the team, accepting or rejecting work results, and steering the project by tracking and forecasting its progress. As an entrepreneur, the product owner facilitates creativity; encourages innovation; and is comfortable with change, ambiguity, debate, conflict, playfulness, experimentation, and informed risk-taking…”

“… To minimize any potential loss or damage from an inaccurate forecast, select a narrow set of customer needs and quickly release a product increment. Then inspect and adapt…”

“… As a rule of thumb, organizations should employ feature teams whenever possible and use component teams only if they must…”

“… Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying no to all but the most crucial features…”

Overall, Agile Product Management with Scrum provides valuable insights and practical guidance for anyone looking to use the Scrum framework to manage product development. 

By following the principles and practices outlined in Agile Product Management with Scrum, you can improve your ability to deliver successful products and meet the needs of customers.

Agile Product Management with Scrum is an indispensable resource for anyone who works as a product owner or expects to do so, as well as executives and coaches interested in establishing agile product management.

I am incredibly grateful that you have taken the time to read this post.

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