For my recent Certified Scrum Product Owner class, I asked participants to make a video that they can take back to their colleagues at their work places. This post captures the activities of one such team and their progression to making an awesome final video. Here is the final video after their fourth sprint. (each sprint was 20 mins duration)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKva5ttCqhA

How does this compare to their product vision statement?

Folks who made this video did not have any video editing experience and they had to learn technology (windows movie maker) and develop content during their sprint working time (20 mins each). To appreciate this teams creativity and ability at problem solving, compare the final Sprint 4 video with the one they had at the end of Sprint 1.

https://youtu.be/_JZMU4CDFE0

How did they do it?

Team work, team work and team work.

This group of people gelled in to a functioning team, that continued to retrospect throughout and implement small improvements in their inner-team processes. They acted on product feedback and most importantly cared about the quality of their work product. To put this in one word: Scrum.

During my Certified Scrum Product Owner class, I make sure that participants have space to practice concepts, tools and techniques that they are learning.

1. Create a product vision statement and continually align actual development of the product to the vision.
2. Participants learn and create a User Story Map, like the one for this video. (Cards in yellow were their must-have’s or minimum viable product – MVP).
3. Learn, create and deliver a product to their definition of done.
4. Learned about importance of Sprint goals. They created sprint goals for each sprint and realized how to value outcomes (kick-ass product) over valuing outputs (story points).
5. Use Kano analysis to identify feature mix. That cool background music in final video was an “exciter” identified via Kano analysis.
6. Product owners learn to temper “gimme more features” reflexes by playing team member roles and learn techniques that help them get to essence of a feature with minimal team effort.

In summary, learn about what makes a good product and practice by building a product. Learning by doing.

Many thanks to Alysia, Alistair, John and Nick from Houston for making such a great video.