Minimum Viable Product Owners

Description

Aim to create a product organisation with the least amount of Product Owners in order to maximise the “Scope of Accountability” of each Product Owner and allow for decisions that have a more holistic impact on the value-chain.

Rationale

A system of work with fewer Product Owners will:

• Increase the relative “Scope of Ownership” for each Product Owner
• Reduce the complexity of collaboration and coordination overhead
• Reduce decision latency
• Increase clarity and cohesion of the vision for the value stream

Reducing the number of Product Owners below a viable level for a given scale of programme will breach the Mental Workload and effectiveness of the Product Owners.

Related Principles

• Limit Product Owner Mental Workload - This is a contending principle: the fewer Product Owners there are, the more Mental Workload they will have to bear.

• Minimise unnecessary complexity
• Each team "sees" exactly one Product Owner
• Organise around value streams
• Scale only when you need to