Saying No as a Product Owner or Product Manager

TL, DR: Saying No Without Burning Bridges

Are you navigating the delicate art of saying No as a Product Owner or product manager? Actually, it’s more of a strategic ‘yes’ to higher priorities, turning down lower-level requests without shutting down communication.

This article will dive into various approaches, from reframing conversations and fostering stakeholder collaboration to being transparent to data-informed rationale and empathetic engagement. Discover how to maintain a harmonious balance between driving Product Goals and nurturing professional relationships with your stakeholders.

Saying No as a Product Owner or Product Manager — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Saying No as a Product Owner or Product Manager

Minimum Viable Library (2) — Product Owner Edition

TL; DR: The Minimum Viable Library Product Owner Edition

The Minimum Viable Library Product Owner edition is available! Explore a series of carefully curated collections of essential books, newsletters, podcasts, and tools to elevate your agile expertise.

Read on and learn how the recommendations for Product Owners cover a wide range of topics, including product management, product discovery, escaping the feature factory, and aligning with critical stakeholders.

Minimum Viable Library Product Owner Edition — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Minimum Viable Library (2) — Product Owner Edition

Minimum Viable Library (1) — Scrum Master Edition

TL; DR: The Minimum Viable Library for Scrum Masters

The Minimum Viable Library is available! Explore a series of carefully curated collections of essential books, newsletters, podcasts, and tools to elevate your agile expertise.

Read on and learn how the recommendations for Scrum Masters cover a wide range of topics, including Scrum, servant leadership, customer value creation, coaching teams, improving team dynamics through Retrospectives, and navigating agile enterprise transformations.

Minimum Viable Library — Scrum Master Edition — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Minimum Viable Library (1) — Scrum Master Edition

The Expensive Folly of the Oversized Product Backlog

TL; DR: The Costs of an Oversized Product Backlog

Some Product Owners believe that a comprehensive Product Backlog is the best way to accomplish the Product Goal and be fully transparent simultaneously—never let a possibly valuable idea slip away. However, a comprehensive backlog may quickly become an oversized Product Backlog with unintended side effects.

Learn more about an oversized Product Backlog’s negative impact on innovation, your Scrum team’s ability to create value, and your relationship with stakeholders.

The Oversized Product Backlog Problem — Making Your Scrum Work #11 — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading The Expensive Folly of the Oversized Product Backlog

60 ChatGPT Prompts Plus Prompt Engineering Guide for Scrum Practitioners

TL; DR: 60 ChatGPT Prompts for Agile Practitioners

ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for those who know how to create prompts. The simplest form of prompting ChatGPT is to feed it the task and ask for results. However, this approach is unlikely to trigger the best response from the model.

Instead, invest more time in prompt engineering, and provide ChatGPT with a better context of the situation, desired outcomes, data, constraints, etc. The following article offers a primer to creating ChatGPT prompts for Scrum practitioners to get you started running. You will learn:

  • Prompt engineering basics
  • Prompt engineering with services like PromptPerfect
  • Using ChatGPT for prompt engineering. (Yub, that works, too.)
Free Download 60 ChatGPT Prompts for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Product Managers — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading 60 ChatGPT Prompts Plus Prompt Engineering Guide for Scrum Practitioners

ChatGPT Product Owner Job Interview — Will You Compete for a Position w/ an LLM Soon?

TL; DR: ChatGPT Product Owner Job Interview

A few weeks ago, I ran a simulated job interview with ChatGPT for a fictitious Scrum Master position. Admittedly, I would not have invited this “interviewee” for an interview with other team members; however, the interview produced some remarkable answers. Consequently, I tried the same with a Product Owner position, aware of the challenges this would pose, as the Product Owner role is significantly fuzzier than the one of a Scrum Master. So, I took a few questions from the Hiring: 82 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions guide and ran a ChatGPT Product Owner job interview.

Read on and learn whether a statistical model will challenge product people in the near future.

ChatGPT Product Owner Job Interview — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading ChatGPT Product Owner Job Interview — Will You Compete for a Position w/ an LLM Soon?