Age of Product’s Food for Thought of January 15th, 2017—shared with 5,934 peers—celebrates 21 years of Scrum with Ken Schwaber and covers Product Owner patterns such as the part-time PO, or how to embed the PO more effectively into the Scrum team’s daily work.

We also learn that Holacracy can add purpose to organizations that use Scrum, and that Scrum even works well at home with four Lil’ Rascals.

We then dive deep into risk-mitigation and how to avoid product failure, and ask ourselves: “Is there a plural of priority?” (Yes, I know, a lot of product roadmaps pretend there is one…) So, why not learn storytelling with Christina Wodtke, and turn ‘priorities’ into ‘priority’ again?

Last but not least: A brand new, free ebook from Hands-on Agile covering 42 interview questions for the Product Owner role is available. You can download it right here.

Agile & Scrum Product Owner Patterns

Ken Schwaber : Scrum @ 21 Ken Schwaber looks back at the development and adoption of Scrum since it was started at the OOPSLA workshop in Austin, TX in October of 1995.

Stephen Frein (via TechBeacon ): Why agile teams need to share the product owner role Stephen Frein believes that building a special box around the Product Owner into which others should not venture is both unnecessary and unhealthy.

(via Scrum Alliance ): No Part-Time Product Owner Matteo Tontini points at a critical anti-pattern in moving to Scrum: the part-time Product Owner.

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse (via Scrum Alliance ): True Cross-Functional Product Development Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse describes how the entire Scrum product development team can participating in product development without getting overwhelmed by staggered sprints.

Ben Linders (via InfoQ ): Adding Purpose to Scrum with Holacracy Ben Linders interviews Martin van Dijken and Jeff Kok on why Scrum needs purpose to be successfully applied, and why Holacracy can provide this kind of purpose for the organization.

Frank de Wit (via Medium ): Scrum @ Home Frank de Wit asks: “If Scrum with adults at the workplace works so well to get things done, would it work at home with kids?”

New Ebook: 42 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Agile Imposters

This second publication in the Hands-on Agile Fieldnotes series is focused on hiring for the Scrum Product Owner role.

This free ebook is not merely listing the 42 questions, but also contains a lot of additional content:

Background information on why the questions are useful in the interview process,

A range of appropriate answers to each interview question.

In our experience, two to three questions from each set will provide more than enough ground for an engaging 60-minute product owner interview. Read the original ‘Hiring: 42 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Agile Imposters’ article or download your free copy now:

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Product & Lean

(via BetaNews ): People, not technology, drive innovation Robert Corace reminds us that disruption is not the automatic result of the arrival of new types of tech, but is based on human ingenuity, good fortune, and hard work.

Scott Sehlhorst (via Tyner Blain ): Playing Whack-A-Mole With Risk Scott Sehlhorst provides a framework for risk mitigation in product development: from assumptions, over hypotheses, to validation by experimentation.

David Pasztor : The Single Biggest Reason Most Products Fail David points at the ‘love the problem, not your solution’ issue: Products don’t fail because of technology issues, bad marketing or ugly UI. Products fail because they are useless.

(via First Round Capital ): My Launch Lessons from 37 Minutes in an Amazon War Room Ibrahim Bashir, the senior manager for Kindle back in 2011, shares his learnings on how to counteract turbulence on product launch day.

Andre Theus (via ProductPlan ): Why “Product Roadmap Priorities” Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Does Andre Theus asks whether your product roadmap really can consist eleven priorities?