Product Management Coach Scott Sehlhorst goes deep into how an Agile Workflow Model and Product Management can enable a company to thrive in an increasingly complex world.
Our Agile Workflow Model is a robust decision making system; providing clarity and alignment at each decision point. This is the only way we can manage the complexity AND stay aligned as we execute.
Scott explains the difference between a "regular workflow" and an "Agile workflow" and much more:
- Cross-functional collaboration over multiple Product teams and how they should work together.
- Product Teams should be focused on the prolems they are solving. It's not about building the thing. It's about solving the problem set before us and achieving the outcomes that result from solving the problem.
- Scaling and coordination across product teams is a challenge, but it's a requirement for large companies.
- The tiers of our workflow model are not hierarchical, they are a separation of concerns, they are looking at different time horizons, they are making decisions on different levels of the problem. They MUST work together.
- 3 Amigos: Product Owner, Tech Lead and QA Lead. Each person has their own vantage point and their own blind spots - but together, you minimize the likelihood of shared blindspots. Add the Scrum Master to those 3 roles and now the team can improve their own execution and effectiveness. As the team gets better at self-improvement, the Scrum Master role becomes more and more about cross-team coordination.
- What do you do if you have too much work for a Product Owner? Don't add a second product owner - then you have two cooks in the kitchen. Instead, add a Business Analyst - someone who can think like a PO, but doesn't hold the same role.
- T-shaped teams: some roles look broader at the situation and context, other roles are very narrow and specific to a topic/discipline. It's rare to find a single person who has both. On our teams with 3 amigos, we improve our odds of seeing things broadly and deeply (as in the T-shape).
Link to Count Basie song Scott mentioned and incorrectly named: Count Basie - Straight Ahead
