10 Anti-patterns (bad practices) in prioritization of Product Owners, PMO and VMO

Hello everyone

One of the factors that most destroys agility is the lack of adequate prioritization patterns according to the context in which it is located, that is, both upstream (1) and downstream (2) practices are used (which even from the good intention) destroy value for the organization. In general, we can incur:

• Building unnecessary things
• Building things that are necessary but worthless
• You don't build what's important
• We let ourselves be carried away by intuition
• We let ourselves be carried away by authority
• We let ourselves be carried away by feelings of friendship or enmity
• etc.

We destroy value and generate waste by dedicating time, effort and money from business areas, execution areas and suppliers in things that should not have been developed and relegating others, which would allow better financial performance or customer satisfaction.

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(and one of mine)

"Building something that was not correctly prioritized is destroying value for the organization"

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Below, I share some of the anti-patterns that I have observed when prioritizing both PMO - Project Management Office -, VMO -Value Management Office- and Product owners, and that I promote to be removed in processes of agile transformation or team agile coaching.  

I hope they will help you advance in the knowledge of better ways to prioritize the work to be done.

Expect more articles on this topic.

Agile greetings,

Jorge Abad.

 

References, notes, or comments

1. Upstream: where the project, product or initiative is prioritized by the PMO, VMO or those who are responsible for prioritizing the portfolio.
2. Downstream: where the product is being developed, and the solution team builds the different functionalities.

Frase: Excelencia a todo nivel

 

Frase: Anyone who keeps learning stays young - Cualquiera que siga aprendiendo permanece joven

He pensado que quizá te guste esta cita de "How Google Works", de Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg .

"Henry Ford said that “anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”"

--

"Henry Ford dijo “cualquiera que deja de aprender es viejo, ya sea a los veinte u ochenta años. Cualquiera que siga aprendiendo permanece joven. Lo mejor de la vida es mantener la mente joven.”"

Empieza a leer este libro gratis: https://a.co/dV6TFIK

Leido y Recomendado: Seis mitos del desarrollo de productos

Six Myths of Product Development /Seis mitos del desarrollo de productos

por 

• Stefan Thomke
 y 
• Donald Reinertsen (clic aquí)

 

New Minibook: Some Ideas for Agile Team’s Retrospectives

More than two years ago, after sharing a meetup on Retrospectives in Mexico City, I observed that were retrospectives, so useful in Agile frameworks, was not being conducted in a way that would generate the desired impact, which is: ACHIEVING THE IMPROVEMENT OF TEAM PERFORMANCE.

Due to the above, the idea of ​​this minibook entered my backlog of pending to build, and today I am finally sharing it with the Agile community and with all those who want to take their work teams to a mindset of continuous improvement.

Some Important Notes from the Mini-Book

The illustrations were made by my wife Diana Apráez, the launch flyer was designed by my daughter Mariana, translation by Dhiraj Bellara - @BellaraDhiraj, additionally I asked colleagues and friends of the Latin American Agile Community to collaborate with me with their reviews, prologues, advices and revisions, thanks again: Diana, Nadia, Lucho, Carlos Palacio, Carlos Quiroga, Carlos Serna, Wbeimar, Juan Andrés, Jaime, Augusto, Alma, Roberto, Daniel and Leonardo for all your contributions.

For the English edition, Ben Linders -https://www.benlinders.com/- did me the honor of writing a Foreword.

I share it below.

Foreword by Ben Linders

Retrospectives are not a new thing. They became widely known through the agile manifesto, the Scrum Guide, and by books like Project Retrospectives by Norm Kerth and Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. The practice of reflecting to learn and improve is much older. I was doing it already in the past century, by assisting people to form a shared picture of what's happening to learn and improve. 

The main thing that we can learn from agile is that retrospecting is a team activity. It's up to the team to find out, acknowledge, and take action. The retrospective facilitator is there to assist the team, to provide the environment, and foster a culture where people feel safe to speak up. Having said that, facilitating is not an easy thing to do.

Many people still seem to struggle when facilitating retrospectives. Expectations are often high, which makes it even harder. Jorge's book brings together many useful practices and suggestions that can help you to facilitate retrospectives that help teams to become a better version of themselves. Use the book to experiment in your retrospectives, and see what works for you. Don't worry if something goes wrong, remember the Prime Directive and use it to learn from things that didn't work. Occasionally you may want to retrospect your retrospectives too. 

Wishing you a wonderful journey of learning and improving!

- Ben Linders

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Thanks a lot Ben for this foreword!

Thanks a lot Dhiraj for the translation!

www.amazon.com/-/es/dp/B08R6YVSCJ

Agile greetings / Saludos ágiles

Jorge Abad

Cita: Nuestro trabajo no es fabricar productos, sino mejorar el proceso de cómo los fabricamos

 

Referencias

• 2 Second Lean Book - https://paulakers.net/books/2-second-lean

Cita: De la Mayoría de los Procesos de Negocio el 90% son Desperdicio y el 10% es Agregación de Valor

 

Referencias

1. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From the World's Greatest Manufacturer - (clic aquí)
2. Las claves del éxito de Toyota: 14 principios de gestión del fabricante más grande del mundo - (clic aquí)