Chris Lukassen

Fuming, Patricia stomped into the office kitchen, grabbed a coffee cup from the cupboard, and slammed the cabinet door.

“Everything okay?” asked Seiko, the team’s Scrum Master, raising his eyebrow.

Patricia blushed. She hadn’t realized just how visibly upset she was, but David, the Product Owner, had managed to throw her off balance, yet again!

“I’m fine,” she said, with a somewhat forced smile.

“No, you’re not!” laughed Seiko. “What’s up?”

Ever since Julie (the CEO) had convinced them to move to Scrum, Patricia felt more and more powerless in her role as a product manager, and she shared this with Seiko. Granted, she hadn’t had that much influence over the teams in the past either. But at least back then, she could get some things done. Now, everything had to go through the Product Owner, and David had his own agenda.

“I know that having a single Product Owner has created more focus and transparency,” she sighed. “But the Development Team doesn’t have my experience or customer insight—so none of the releases have addressed the customer’s problems properly.”

“I’ve noticed,” said Seiko. “The teams indeed don’t have a great picture of our customers, which probably scares them. Or maybe they just prefer to code.”

“You can code all you want,” Patricia replied. “But it doesn’t matter if the customers don’t like it!”

“That’s David’s problem now,” Seiko smirked.

“Fair point, but he’s stretched so thin that he’ll never be able to work out all the details for all the teams,” Patricia explained.

“Well, you don’t have to be the driver to get where you want to go,” Seiko added with a smile. Patricia thought about their exchange for the rest of the day and even into the evening. Having one product with one owner and one backlog listing all work that needed to be done made too much sense to revert to the old way of doing things. On the other hand, the teams simply didn’t get it, and she felt she had the knowledge to help them get it.

When she woke the next morning and walked into her kitchen, she noticed her daughter Emi was struggling with her lunchbox. She was using great enthusiasm and force to get it shut.

“Oh my goodness, what all have you crammed in there?” asked Patricia.

Still focused on shutting her lunchbox, Emi listed off its contents: “Fruit, sandwiches, and an apple.” Before Patricia could explain that an apple is a fruit, Emi explained, “I will need all of this today, and I don’t want them in separate boxes.” And with a final push, she managed to snap the lid shut.

When Patricia arrived at work later that morning, she called a meeting with Seiko, Julie, and David to discuss the gap between product management and the Development Team.

“The Development Team needs a mix of skills, and that mix should go beyond programming, testing, and designing. I have concluded that people who know the market—like me—have a role to play as well. So, I’d like to join the Development Team.” With a smile, she added, “It doesn’t make sense to put us in separate boxes.”