As an agile developer, I think that it’s important that it’s not just the scrum masters and agile coaches that doing the the thinking about how agile teams work and what they could better. Which is why I try to do some digging into agile topics each year and why you’ll find a few articles about agile across this blog.
This year I’m looking into the role of the product owner. I’ve worked with quite a few and trying a get a handle on what makes the good ones so much better to work with than the others. One of the books that I’d seen recommended for aspiring Product Owners was Badass:Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/1491919019/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550617952&sr=8-1&keywords=badass+kathy+sierra
- so I picked up a copy. I have to say it didn’t really help me much with the ways product owners can effectively work with development teams, which is what in most interested in at the moment but I would defiantly recommend that product owners and everyone involved In UX give it a read. Its really insightful and time well spent.
The main thrust of the book is that rather than aiming for an awesome product per say we should aim to create experiences that users achieve their own awesome. In addition to the thought provoking perspective that by focusing more on the users needs there is a bonus feature that this also talks about how we learn a new skills. As a using a new product involves developing new skills this is a great perspective that will hopefully help when developing complex products and has the bonus that as a professional developer I’ve always got a thing or two I’m trying to learn so getting some info on what makes for a good learning process was a personal win.
If you want to get a flavour of what this book is all about before diving in, you could check out one of the talks below.