How Lean UX supports the Product Owner in making better decisions
SCRUM & LEAN UX | Episode 7
The Holy Grail
Now, one of the main goals for the Product Owner is to focus the production effort to that which is of most value to the customer and end-user. Which outcome will affect them in the most positive way?
It’s generally an anti-pattern for the Product Owner to be the sole person focussing on discovery and value.
“The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do it.” — The Scrum Guide
Embedding/applying Lean UX principles and techniques within Development Teams will support the Product Owner in just that. The team can help create a layout of the current state of the market and explore opportunities, for example by the following activities:
- Lean UX Canvas
- Problem Statement Template
- Assumption & Hypotheses worksheets
- Proto-persona’s
- Customer Interviews
- Idea Generation / Design Studio’s
The benefit of performing these activities is that they encourages a larger view of the work beyond features. The activities that follow help build evidence that result in making better decisions.
It provides transparency and visibility into untested assumptions and risks to the product, business, and customer. The downside, one could argue, is that doing these activities (which are traditionally perceived to be Discovery activities) would distract the team from the Development and creating a “Done” increment. But rather than running Discovery and Development in dual tracks, a true cross-functional team can balance these activities to get to “Done” in a single Sprint.
Lean UX dares teams to sail the blue unknown and make discoveries together, to share their destiny and faith.
“Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.” — The Scrum Guide.
It’s not hard to imagine what happens in a complex environment when those doing the development and delivery haven’t been part of the process of learning from it. Simple question: how often are mistakes made or did opportunities go lost, simply because learnings weren’t shared? When teams fall out of sync, so will the product. Ergo, making sense of the research is a team activity in Scrum.
When the words “develop” and “development” are used in the Scrum Guide, they refer to complex work such as discovery: the research and identification of viable market opportunities, technologies, and product capabilities. Now how awesome is it, being a Product Owner, to have Development Teams at your back collecting evidence that benefits your decision making?
The real downside is that it’s hard. It’s hard to create this harmony. Being able to maximize value requires facing the hardships that are inherent to training cross-functional teams. The Product Owner can truly drive the vision with outcomes that are continuously inspected and adapted to better the delivered experiences. And that’s the Holy Grail.
Working with Multiple Development Teams
It is very challenging for a Product Owner to work with multiple Scrum Teams on a single Product. It becomes hard for the Product Owner, being part of all those Scrum Teams, to attend the events that require their presence and properly process all the new learnings and insights brought forth.
If the Development Teams become more adapt in applying Lean UX techniques and principles, they become more autonomous and more committed. They can research, learn and apply the learnings as a unit: they can sail their own course towards the shared vision. That’s agility.
With this, teams can inter-align (for example through frequent 10 minute pair-ups) with the Product Owner, notifying the Product Owner of valuable learnings that could require adaptations to the Product Backlog. The Product Owner, driving the vision, will guide the team in making these adaptations and will help them focus on the most valuable learnings.
With this article I hope to motivate Product Owners to explore the possibilities of Lean UX with Scrum. For us it’s been a journey about increasing creativity and the overall shared sense of commitment towards maximizing value. A smarter team makes better decisions.
Personally I am still on the journey towards discovering this holy grail with two teams. These are very modern concepts. The teams I am working with are only beginning to grow familiar with it.
What I can say so far is that working with such cross-skilled individuals is truly amazing. I experience it similar to being in a band, where it takes repetition, commitment, improvisation, creativity, focus and patience to create the harmony required to deliver world class performances / experiences.
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