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Doing XP with multiple teams working on 1 product (started in the Deployed Released thread)


 

Hello practitioners and Thanks for the concerns Steve.

I think there is another question sitting in the thread below about "Deployed" and "Released".
That's why I start a new thread.


>> Under this single team concept, where are the potentially many stakeholders, including users, customers, money people, executives, marketing, sales, IT, guardians of data and architectural standards, documentors, trainers, customer support and customer service?? Part of the team, really?? If not, does the team ignore them?? If the team does not ignore them, doesn't liaising dominate the PO job in any but the smallest organizations??

I think the question is:
"How does the Scrum Product Owner accountability work with multiple teams working on 1 product?"
? (and lots of influencers, providers, ? lovers of the product = stakeholders)


Note:
  • Multiple products & multiple teams = Good, you have lots of options. I don't know the best one since its so product specific (just software? SAAS? hardware products? medical devices with embedded software? ...)
  • Multiple products & 1 team = Ughh... Tricky? (Think about your definition of "Product")
  • 1 product & 1 team = easiest situation I guess out of the 4


Focus here:?
  • 1 product & multiple teams

Every Scaling Framework has their own opinion on this.
My experience by coaching teams and my opinion strongly influenced by me being a ScrumOrg Trainer and teaching Nexus:
  • There is 1 Product Owner for 1 Product (SAFe and others say something different)
    • I have seen this work well with 3-6 teams (although there is evidence that it seems to work with larger amount of teams)
  • 1 Product Owner with x teams needs to "scale" her work
    • She is not able to talk to the developers on a daily basis anymore
    • She is not able to talk to the millions of users anymore
    • She is not able to discuss with everyone in a face2face session about upcoming features or ideas
PS
SAFe has a Team Product Owner which is a strong 'smell' to me. More details here ?



What have you seen working (or not) in a scenario where you have 1 Product Owner and 1 Product and X teams and Y stakeholders?


Looking forward to experiences!
THANKS

Peter Gfader







---- A bit of context below ----

Major problems I observed with different orgs:
  1. Trust in the development teams to enable them to deploy when they feel like
  2. Technical excellence to make this?? ? (which relates to 1.trust)
    1. interruption free (0 downtime)? ?
    2. stress free (test harness)?
    3. learning in Production (observability)


What usually works easily:
  • Trust in the Product Owners to take the responsibility of "Release" (when the Product Owner feels like it's a good moment, based on external events or data)


image.png
I have written these things up on my blog here??and a whitepaper with feedback from Jez.


 

I work at a place that used to have 10 teams working on 1 product. (We have since moved on to 12 teams working on 3 products)
But originally, we had 10 teams working on 1 product, and the way we effectively handled that is that each iteration the thematic feature set (epic) which the teams would work on were considered their own product for the course of that iteration.? Each iteration of the "product" that the teams were working on would either continue to be the same or switch to something?new if that new epic/sumproduct/theme was "complete".
One advantage of this is that every team got to learn just about all parts of the product.


brought to you by the letters A, V, and I
and the number 47


On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 12:58 PM Peter Gfader <peter@...> wrote:
Hello practitioners and Thanks for the concerns Steve.

I think there is another question sitting in the thread below about "Deployed" and "Released".
That's why I start a new thread.


>> Under this single team concept, where are the potentially many stakeholders, including users, customers, money people, executives, marketing, sales, IT, guardians of data and architectural standards, documentors, trainers, customer support and customer service?? Part of the team, really?? If not, does the team ignore them?? If the team does not ignore them, doesn't liaising dominate the PO job in any but the smallest organizations??

I think the question is:
"How does the Scrum Product Owner accountability work with multiple teams working on 1 product?"
? (and lots of influencers, providers, ? lovers of the product = stakeholders)


Note:
  • Multiple products & multiple teams = Good, you have lots of options. I don't know the best one since its so product specific (just software? SAAS? hardware products? medical devices with embedded software? ...)
  • Multiple products & 1 team = Ughh... Tricky? (Think about your definition of "Product")
  • 1 product & 1 team = easiest situation I guess out of the 4


Focus here:?
  • 1 product & multiple teams

Every Scaling Framework has their own opinion on this.
My experience by coaching teams and my opinion strongly influenced by me being a ScrumOrg Trainer and teaching Nexus:
  • There is 1 Product Owner for 1 Product (SAFe and others say something different)
    • I have seen this work well with 3-6 teams (although there is evidence that it seems to work with larger amount of teams)
  • 1 Product Owner with x teams needs to "scale" her work
    • She is not able to talk to the developers on a daily basis anymore
    • She is not able to talk to the millions of users anymore
    • She is not able to discuss with everyone in a face2face session about upcoming features or ideas
PS
SAFe has a Team Product Owner which is a strong 'smell' to me. More details here ?



What have you seen working (or not) in a scenario where you have 1 Product Owner and 1 Product and X teams and Y stakeholders?


Looking forward to experiences!
THANKS

Peter Gfader







---- A bit of context below ----

Major problems I observed with different orgs:
  1. Trust in the development teams to enable them to deploy when they feel like
  2. Technical excellence to make this?? ? (which relates to 1.trust)
    1. interruption free (0 downtime)? ?
    2. stress free (test harness)?
    3. learning in Production (observability)


What usually works easily:
  • Trust in the Product Owners to take the responsibility of "Release" (when the Product Owner feels like it's a good moment, based on external events or data)


image.png
I have written these things up on my blog here??and a whitepaper with feedback from Jez.


 

There are lots of possible "solutions", none of which solve all the issues in all the contexts,? The key to agility is facilitating each organization to continuously evolve their approach based on feedback?in their evolving context.

My concern was not any particular solutions, but rather that terminology/principles that imply that the development team includes all the skills/concerns/people necessary to address all of the pragmatic deployment issues discourages too many of the potential solutions.

On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 2:58 AM Peter Gfader <peter@...> wrote:
Hello practitioners and Thanks for the concerns Steve.

I think there is another question sitting in the thread below about "Deployed" and "Released".
That's why I start a new thread.


>> Under this single team concept, where are the potentially many stakeholders, including users, customers, money people, executives, marketing, sales, IT, guardians of data and architectural standards, documentors, trainers, customer support and customer service?? Part of the team, really?? If not, does the team ignore them?? If the team does not ignore them, doesn't liaising dominate the PO job in any but the smallest organizations??

I think the question is:
"How does the Scrum Product Owner accountability work with multiple teams working on 1 product?"
? (and lots of influencers, providers, ? lovers of the product = stakeholders)


Note:
  • Multiple products & multiple teams = Good, you have lots of options. I don't know the best one since its so product specific (just software? SAAS? hardware products? medical devices with embedded software? ...)
  • Multiple products & 1 team = Ughh... Tricky? (Think about your definition of "Product")
  • 1 product & 1 team = easiest situation I guess out of the 4


Focus here:?
  • 1 product & multiple teams

Every Scaling Framework has their own opinion on this.
My experience by coaching teams and my opinion strongly influenced by me being a ScrumOrg Trainer and teaching Nexus:
  • There is 1 Product Owner for 1 Product (SAFe and others say something different)
    • I have seen this work well with 3-6 teams (although there is evidence that it seems to work with larger amount of teams)
  • 1 Product Owner with x teams needs to "scale" her work
    • She is not able to talk to the developers on a daily basis anymore
    • She is not able to talk to the millions of users anymore
    • She is not able to discuss with everyone in a face2face session about upcoming features or ideas
PS
SAFe has a Team Product Owner which is a strong 'smell' to me. More details here ?



What have you seen working (or not) in a scenario where you have 1 Product Owner and 1 Product and X teams and Y stakeholders?


Looking forward to experiences!
THANKS

Peter Gfader







---- A bit of context below ----

Major problems I observed with different orgs:
  1. Trust in the development teams to enable them to deploy when they feel like
  2. Technical excellence to make this?? ? (which relates to 1.trust)
    1. interruption free (0 downtime)? ?
    2. stress free (test harness)?
    3. learning in Production (observability)


What usually works easily:
  • Trust in the Product Owners to take the responsibility of "Release" (when the Product Owner feels like it's a good moment, based on external events or data)


image.png
I have written these things up on my blog here??and a whitepaper with feedback from Jez.