Product Ownership The Key to Successful Agile Transformation in Government
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
Product Ownership: The Key to Successful Agile Transformation 1
Introduction For much of the government’s history in project management, an approach called Waterfall was dominant. This traditional approach for delivering products is a sequential process involving a series of activities or phases that need to be completed before moving to the next phase. The requirements are identified upfront and the stakeholders have limited opportunity to interact with the product and provide feedback until the final product is delivered. Subsequently, errors, bugs or other issues may not be identified until the product is final – and often this means development must start all over again from the beginning. But in the past decade, a new approach to product development and software creation has come on the scene: Agile methodology. According to the General Services Administration, “Agile is a valuebased, iterative approach under which business needs and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing crossfunctional teams. Agile advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change.” But while Agile approaches have started to revolutionize government projects, there are still stumbling blocks to overcome in adopting this methodology. One major opportunity is encouraging those in the federal government using Agile to move away from traditional project management to a product ownership approach. Product ownership focuses on the creation and delivery of the product being developed to ensure it is truly useful to citizens and the agency that needs it. To understand more about how product ownership is the key to a successful Agile transformation in government, GovLoop partnered with Excella, a leading technology firm with expertise in Agile transformation and training for this industry perspective. In the following pages, we’ll share the difference between project management and product ownership in the federal government; understand what makes a truly successful product owner; and gain insights from Richard Cheng, Certified Scrum Trainer and Director of Training at Excella.
2 Industry Perspective
Understanding Agile and Product Ownership in the Federal Government To understand why product ownership is the key to effective Agile implementation in the government, it is important to first understand why Agile has become an essential component of the progress made toward building and delivering better digital projects in the government. According to the Agile Government Handbook created by the Agile Government Leadership program, Agile management or Agile project management is an iterative and incremental method of managing the design and build activities for engineering, information technology and new product or service development projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner. “Agile values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a very fixed plan. It’s not that we ignore the items on the right, it’s that we focus on the first parts of those statements as the key drivers to delivering the right solutions.” said Cheng. Agile is increasingly important in government, as citizens’ digital expectations of services continue to rise. As government IT teams and digital projects need to be more nimble, flexible and reactive, Agile methodology, which works iteratively and more incrementally, allows projects and services to be tested by citizens as they are developed, then tweaked and fixed throughout the process. Versions of the product are released early and often, and the process is more efficient and reduces costs. Further, the Agile movement has unquestionably been on the rise in government for several years. In fact, some 80 percent of major federal IT projects today describe themselves as “Agile” or “Iterative” according to a 2017 study from Deloitte. Agile is becoming more critical to the success of government IT projects. But if government wants to execute Agile methodology effectively, and let it transform government in the way it potentially can, government must shift from traditional project management to an approach that instead focuses on product ownership.
In traditional government project management, the project manager is concerned with the sequencing of activities going into the creation of a project and keeping items and deadlines on track. “Project management is still important for things like construction and manufacturing, where we are repeatedly building known items,” Cheng said. “However, in IT digital solutions, there is a lot of discovery, and we need to be able to identify the highest-value items, deliver those early and keep doing it often. That is where product ownership comes into play.” Product ownership is “less about how or when you build it, and more about what it is you’re actually building” Cheng said. “Project management focuses on the process. Product ownership focuses on ensuring we are delivering something valuable.” So how does a product owner do that? By setting the vision and roadmap for the product and truly understanding what the product is setting out to do and the value it provides the end user.
“Project management focuses on the process. Product ownership focuses on ensuring we are delivering something valuable.” — Richard Cheng, Excella
Product Ownership: The Key to Successful Agile Transformation 3
The Value of a Strong Product Owner In addition to setting the vision and roadmap for the creation of a product, a product owner must also expand his or her job into three major areas: outward-facing, inwardfacing and refinement.
Outward-facing
Inward-facing
This means that a product owner must work with end-users, customers, stakeholders, business team members and leadership to do the following for each group:
This means the product owner must also work with everybody working to build the product, particularly the Scrum teams. (The Scrum team is a collection of individuals working together to deliver the requested and committed product increments.) Internally facing, the product owner must work with team members to:
• Gather their needs • Answer their questions • Validate what has been built thus far meets their needs
• Provide the vision and goals, and communicate needs • Answer their questions • Validate what they have built thus far meets the business needs
Refinement
(requirements management) Finally, the product owner is responsible for refinement of the product, or management of all of the things the product actually needs to do in its evolving and end state. This involves several important responsibilities: • Identifying the highest-value items to be delivered • Adding new Product Backlog Items (or requirements) as they are discovered • Removing stale or dated Product Backlog Items • Reprioritizing based on latest learnings • Breaking things up that are too big • Joining things together that may have logical groupings
4 Industry Perspective
Product Owner Work outside the Scrum team
• Work with SMEs, stakeholders, customers • Understand needs • Validate product
• Answer questions
Work with the Scrum team
Product backlog refinement
• Sprint planning
• Split PBIs
• Release planning • Daily scrum
• Answer questions
• Create PBIs
• Reorder the Product Backlog
• Validate PBI
• Sprint review Put together, all of the above is no simple task. This means it’s critical to have a person with the right skills, abilities and attitude in place to enable successful product ownership. So what makes a successful product owner? There are a variety of qualities that make a good product owner, some of which are inherent to the person, and some of which are enabled by leadership, explained Cheng. A product owner must have all of the following:
Bandwidth
The time to do the job properly and give it the attention it needs
Vision
Authority
Interest
Understanding
A true and deep understanding of where the product is going
The product owner must want to be a product owner, not simply be assigned to the role
One singular individual with the ability to make calls and decisions
The product owner should understand the needs of the business and how the product will meet those needs
Product Ownership: The Key to Successful Agile Transformation 5
Federal Product Ownership “The American people expect to interact with government through digital channels such as websites, email, and mobile applications. By building digital services that meet their needs, we can make the delivery of our policy and programs more effective. Today, too many of our digital services projects do not work well, are delivered late, or are over budget. To increase the success rate of these projects, the U.S. Government needs a new approach. We created a playbook of 13 key “plays” drawn from successful practices from the private sector and government that, if followed together, will help government build effective digital services.” — US Digital Services Playbook The federal government sees the need for stronger product ownership within its federal IT program. The
U.S. Digital Service group, an extension of the Office of the President, has developed a Digital Services Playbook which describes 13 “plays” to enable the government to build effective digital services. From these plays, Play #6 speaks to the “single product owner who has the authority and responsibility to assign tasks and work elements; make business, product, and technical decisions; and be accountable for the success or failure of the overall service”. The Playbook then goes on to describe key concepts and questions to be resolved for this product owner role. Using this as federal guidance, government agencies are starting to understand the need for better federal product ownership on IT solutions. Critical to the success of these efforts is for agencies to identify and empower federal product owners.
How to Create Great Federal Product Owners While it is crucial to a successful Agile transformation, product ownership is no easy task. One important step towards ensuring skilled product owners are leading your Agile projects is to provide the right support and training. That’s where Excella can help. In addition to its technology solutions, Excella also offers robust in-person public and private training courses geared toward those looking to become better product owners. Excella’s Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training is a two-day course that first provides an understanding of how Scrum transforms initial concepts and goals into a product backlog and user stories, which are ultimately developed into project deliverables. Then, the class delves into the responsibilities of the product owner - creating requirements, effective prioritization, long-term and short-term planning, and providing vision. These concepts are presented in a highly interactive and collaborative format with elements of lecture, classroom discussion, exercises, games and video interwoven throughout the class.
6 Industry Perspective
Private training offers the following additional benefits: • Upfront Discovery: An Excella Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) will review your goals, active projects, organizational situation and challenges to ensure the desired outcome of the training is achieved — in particular, how the training supports your overall business or mission objectives. • Personalized: Each course is fine-tuned to address the objectives and challenges of your organization or team, based on the upfront discovery. • Convenience: Classes can be held in Excella’s training facility, located in Arlington, Va. — just outside of Washington, D.C. — or at any suitable location you select across the U.S. • No-Hassle: Excella’s Training Division handles all of the details — space, materials, preclass coordination, on-site logistics and parking validation. “Coming out of our courses, you’ll be armed with an understanding of how to be an effective product owner,” Cheng said.
Conclusion
As citizens’ expectations of government continue to rise, and technology continues to play an ever-expanding role in delivering services, government will need to turn to Agile to meet these expectations and deliver quality products and technology. And as more government organizations seek to take advantage of Agile methodology, they’ll need to consider how to empower their product owners. With proper support, backing from leadership, understanding of a product owner’s role and responsibilities, and the right training, product ownership can truly transform Agile projects in the federal government. And when that happens, everybody – internal employees and citizen end-users alike – will benefit.
About Excella
About Govloop
Excella Consulting is an award-winning technology company helping federal agencies, brands and nonprofits across DC transform big ideas into elegant solutions. With expertise in Agile transformation, data and analytics, digital services, and modernization, our technologists craft solutions that solve the challenges of today and evolve to meet the opportunities of tomorrow.
GovLoop’s mission is to “connect government to improve government.” We aim to inspire public-sector professionals by serving as the knowledge network for government. GovLoop connects more than 250,000 members, fostering cross-government collaboration, solving common problems and advancing government careers. GovLoop is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a team of dedicated professionals who share a commitment to connect and improve government.
Learn more: www.excella.com or email info@excella.com
For more information about this report, please reach out to info@govloop.com.
Product Ownership: The Key to Successful Agile Transformation 7
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