Most people have seen the statistic where a man will apply for a job he meets 6/10 qualifications for and the woman won’t unless she meets 10/10 (states HBR, Confidence Code, Lean In…). This is centered in a lot of bias, imposter syndrome, and also business norms and these are all hurting not just the job prospects of someone applying but also the success of the person who actually gets hired (Natalie speculation here…)
Think about when you started in a new job or new department and the flood of acronyms that you heard. It was like people were speaking a different language and they pretty much were. I’m not saying acronyms are bad – they do have their places as mnemonic devices and to shorten things – but when they develop into a lingo that is unrecognizable to anyone outside the fold we have a problem.
Feedback is great. Feedback is a gift. Yeah, yeah. I’m an Agile coach. Giving feedback to teams, managers, leadership, and organization is my job. But hey, I’m sorry that I can’t always give it to you immediately. It doesn’t exactly work that way.
There are certain events and people that make you see things more clearly. These are catalysts for change, change agents, breaths of fresh air, or taking off the rose colored glasses/beer goggles. As Agile coaches that is our job, to show teams that what they have been doing is not the only way of doing it. That there are other ways to see things. But what about the actual change? And what about the process that teams have to go through to get to the same vantage point? How do we address the grief cycle they need to go through?
A product owner should be dedicated to one team. Or no more than two teams working on the same product with the same product backlog. But what about a product owner who we spread across two teams with different backlogs working on different products? We’re asking them to be two people and it’s not sustainable! This product owner told me he was in 17 hours of meetings between the two teams per week (and I added it up and it was true)! For the product owner who should be splitting his/her time between self thought, stakeholder and customer input, and team time, it’s not possible for those things to be equal or sustainable not to mention the loss of productivity when context switching/multitasking. Though unfortunately this is the non-ideal reality sometimes.
