Grow to entrepreneurial product owners
To map how far the organization is in giving mandate and responsibility to product owners, we have developed a model inspired by the “feature team adoption map” from LeSS. This model maps how product ownership is organized in the organization.
In the model, the vertical axis indicates what type of product or subproduct a product owner is responsible for. The horizontal axis shows how much a product owner has to say about it. The arrow indicates that this is a growth model: from the backlog administrator in the lower left of the model to the mini-CEO in the upper right.
Using the model, you can map how responsibilities are currently divided among product owners and possible other roles involved in prioritizing and allocating capacity. You can also use the model to gain insight into where product owners currently stand and how you would like this to be in the future.
Exercise with one or more product owners:
- Download the model “responsibility versus mandate of product owners.”
- Print the model and write the names of the product owners on cards.
- Have the product owners plot themselves in the model. What product are they responsible for, and how much do they have to say about it? What do you see? Where are most product owners located?
- If the product owners are not yet on the right of the model, who is there? Who carries budget responsibility for the products, who is responsible for market and product development?
- When you look to the future, what is the ambition of the product owner? What is the desired position of the product owners in the new responsive organizational structure?
- Discuss what the next step is in the development. What is needed to get there? What steps can be taken to get there?
Responsibility versus mandate of product owners (inspired by feature team adoption model by Less company, 2014)
