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Product Owner Workshop Ideas

Backlog = 17
Expectations = 15
Jira = 13
Metrics = 2
Roles & Responsibilities = 25
Stories = 19
Teamwork = 17
TrainX = 7
Value Streams = 8
Waterfall Teams = 11
WF Transition Plan = 6
Workshop Customization = 10

Area
Idea
Backlog
Best practices for managing huge backlogs and coordination of work. Previously the product managers didn’t have to schedule the work, the project managers did. Knowing how it will work with the new structure, especially in light of some teams not operating within agile models (middleware, BEV) would be beneficial.
Backlog
How are backlogs being prioritized by the teams?
Backlog
How to partner with LOBs/addressing ambiguities and pressures of “when will this go to market” requests from LOBs
Backlog
More tips on using the Agile Backlog view would be useful. The board display is basically driven by the business and not the actual scrum team needs.
Backlog
What I’d like to know more about is prioritization of work, especially for those projects that are split across many value streams and scrum teams. It appears that coordination at all levels and working out timing when you have competing priorities is an issue and raises surprises with some projects requesting work to be done within the scrum.
Backlog
Business prioritization overlooked by developers, resulting in coding way ahead in sprints
Backlog
How to handle bottle necks (resources)
Backlog
How to handle unexpected hurdles
Backlog
How to plan and prioritize a backlog and sprints with many supported projects and dependencies
Backlog
How to plan/manage sprints where the ratio of dev work to QA work is off – our QA scope is often much more than dev
Backlog
How to utilize the release planning ritual – i.e., when you have a project (or a big feature) that includes a lot work and you plan out what that work looks like over many sprints and when it will be complete and releasable
Backlog
Prioritization – business and/or any other internal consideration
Backlog
Prioritize items how do you determine this- meetings, email, or ???? and with who- scrum team, sponsors, key stakeholders and so on???(and only allowing 1 number 1 and 1 number 2 and so on…)
Backlog
Sticking to your word, meaning when you say no more items in this sprint, you stick to it as much as possible. And when critical items come up, you work with the team to move some stories out to handle those critical items.
Backlog
Understand the long term vision- not only knowing the project you are working on but where it is going in the future and not only getting that from the sponsor but from other key stake holders that are on the project.
Backlog
When sizing occurs, team brings up additional questions that should have been asked and answered on grooming calls
Backlog
Work load conflicts
Expectations
balance theoretical and process principles with practical application within the Wells Fargo model so that it can be used as an accelerant for the transformation of the organization.
Expectations
Being new the bank, additional considerations in the onboarding cadence should be folded in to the training. Familiarize new team members to the company’s vision, educate and prepare in his/her PO agile role.
Expectations
Best practices
Expectations
EPM/Tools, resources and best practice/cadence
Expectations
understand the why of what they are doing and how that supports successful Agile delivery
Expectations
Understanding the Agile Vocabulary/Terminology
Expectations
what tech companies or FinTech companies are doing this well and what golden nuggets might be leverage from them
Expectations
2 day workshop 4 months ago did not prepare them to hit the ground running
Expectations
a guide book on what we can expect once our scrums were stood up
Expectations
Certifications for those interested
Expectations
Long- term learning opptys – training in develop you, etc
Expectations
no time for training
Expectations
opportunity to provide best practices and other tips / help to support scrums
Expectations
PO too busy – just need to be told what to do – not figure it out
Expectations
The training should cover from ideation, to Business Sequencing to value stream alignment to scrum team alignment to release
Jira
align the Scrum Team Epics to Agile Central’s Features and what data must be completed in JIRA
Jira
detail for how to create the backlog in Jira. I had not even been provided a sample backlog or seen Jira
Jira
Different usage adoption among SCRUM team members in JIRA for communication and documentation.
Jira
Fix Version is not helpful on this board layout. PO are instructed to put the enterprise release reference desired by the business. It never changes despite project late start or delays. Fix Version is used by Release Management with different values that indicate the actual release. At that point, the Sprint name is really serving the same use for the PO.
Jira
I’d welcome the inclusion of content on JIRA and other Agile Tools being used at Wells Fargo.
Jira
refresher on the JIRA application and best practices for setting up the JIRA board for your Scrum team
Jira
we received zero JIRA training in our agile workshops, and were directed to the various self- serve classes that are available on line. These were OK, but they aren’t specific to Wells Fargo so it was difficult to translate to what we do everyday.
Jira
How to configure/manipulate Jira, from a reporting perspective. The more I can automate that way, the greater the consistency (to those reading the output), which equates to better understanding by the audience for where a particular body of work sits or where my team is in a given cycle. All of that ultimately frees up more of my time to support the team, increase our efficiency and quality.
Jira
How to use Jira for a well- constructed and easily manageable backlog
Jira
Key project issues are not always easily and readily identifiable and reportable on the JIRA board as they may involve multiple stories
Jira
something like, top ten views/uses Product Owners use JIRA for
Jira
Understand and manage sprint capacity at each platform level (M2 vs Native vs Nuance) on JIRA is not obvious and easy
Jira
Understanding the Reports in JIRA and why they are important/who looks at them and why
Metrics
Overview and importance of velocity and burn down, other important tools/metrics?
Metrics
PO needs to be sensitized to timing of Predictability Metrics pull from Jira
Roles & Responsibilities
balance for leading the team and ensuring the Steering Committee (leaders) are happy with the progress being made
Roles & Responsibilities
From Development to Deploy/Customer facing i.e. what it means to you, your role & responsibilities, how you and your team win through interactions, iterative development, collaboration w/LOBs, team building and celebrating success every step of the way
Roles & Responsibilities
how to not use to my technical background during the acceptance and have QA present to me the work completed for the stated story
Roles & Responsibilities
How XYZ scrum team works, Roles & Responsibilities, PO vision statement and areas of expertise to manage and lead change
Roles & Responsibilities
One thing to consider is that most of the Product Owners are also Product Managers, and our time is spread very thin between managing with the backlog and other ceremonies of Scrum while trying to stay strategic and have to time to focus on new customer experiences and innovation. Consideration of this challenge will certainly be appreciated.
Roles & Responsibilities
PO key attributes (baseline/identify even seasoned POs area of improvement)
Roles & Responsibilities
the difference between the PM and APO roles - WHAT an APO is responsible for and the HOW to get it done would be great. By HOW I mean how to use the Agile process and other team members to accomplish your APO goals.
Roles & Responsibilities
training/awareness of the value stream process and their role for each step – business sequencing, project review and planning
Roles & Responsibilities
Value Stream, day to day role responsibilities, and overall role expectations within the framework
Roles & Responsibilities
Agile Coach very familiar with Agile but not Wells Fargo
Roles & Responsibilities
ambiguity in roles & responsibilities
Roles & Responsibilities
Being able to say no when needed (but being flexible when needed also)
Roles & Responsibilities
Clear definition of roles and responsibilities for your core team (most specifically the BA Role vs the PO Role – this was a significant challenge on my project and I ended up doing a lot of what probably should have been the BA Role because the BA was told by their manager they were only responsible for certain things)
Roles & Responsibilities
Deeper dive into the roles and responsibilities of a PO
Roles & Responsibilities
Learning to identify and engage your extended team members as early as possible in your project
Roles & Responsibilities
Managing stakeholders in Agile
Roles & Responsibilities
Roles utilization (how to better utilize BA or anybody else in the scrum)
Roles & Responsibilities
Scrum Master too busy doing PM stuff
Roles & Responsibilities
Scrum team deliverables to the VS’s
Roles & Responsibilities
What does an Agile Coach do?
Roles & Responsibilities
What is the difference between PO, SM and PM in terms of roles and responsibilities
Roles & Responsibilities
What is the role of the PM vs scrum master?
Roles & Responsibilities
When is a PM assigned or not?
Roles & Responsibilities
When is the scrum master assigned or not?
Roles & Responsibilities
Who is responsible for what – Roles & Responsibilities
Stories
a lack of clarity about artifacts. It seems that BRDs are more- or- less being replaced by Stories, but we still seem to be relying on FSD and SAS documents, which really seem more like waterfall artifacts. Even for the Stories we have problems, of at least two kinds. First, some stories are too technical for the client to be writing, so it’s unclear who should be doing that
Stories
A refresher on the CR process for adding new requirements to an existing, already approved body of work
Stories
clarification on what amount of detail goes into acceptance criteria and who owns putting that detail into stories. Some teammates want every little detail, scenario and use case added. Others are under the impression of global statements to describe the functionality and questions would be discussed and/or documented as comments.
Stories
conversely, in more technical scrum teams there is occasionally a lack of representation for the nontechnical (e.g. business) requirements.
Stories
Epic names are generally meaningless since the business writes a few epics and often too vague to be an at- a- glance indication of what the story is about.
Stories
how Story Points are created and used
Stories
how to best refine the stories and provide a proper level of detail in the Acceptance Criteria
Stories
lack of readily available info on how best to document user stories and set up sprints
Stories
Providing guidance to LOB/Business partners on how to write Epics and their corresponding features
Stories
Second, there seems to be a lack of understanding or training related to getting stories into a Ready state (prior to Planning); this has some connection to the artifact issue, as well.
Stories
What artifacts are required in agile? Requirements, etc
Stories
writing User Stories – POs who are used to getting PPD and BRD documents from the business with everything laid out clearly and all requirements captures, User story writing is very new
Stories
Bring real world PBIs to size and split
Stories
Dependencies of Virtulation – M2 back end & OPS front end = Links & Timing
Stories
Documentation: How to document risk associated issues. other artifacts we daily approve such as BRDs and release document orientation
Stories
Does a story require a dark code switch when developed and deployed? If so then must be in DoR.
Stories
How to get stories in a ready state to be picked up in a sprint
Stories
How to write epics – how epics and stories relate
Stories
How to write user stories – there is a tendency here to write stories as tasks and not with the end user in mind due to a lot of challenges the teams are facing, how to break up functionality into the smallest increments of work that makes sense for the end user, not the team member
Teamwork
Another example is a Dev team having the PO contact me for sample existing integration code but their Dev team refuses to edit for their needs, instead wanting my Dev to spend time editing it.
Teamwork
DXD approach to Agile and scrum team engagement
Teamwork
how do we partner with “Product Managers” across Wells Fargo (Value Streams and LOBs)
Teamwork
How to engage teams for test only in agile for LOB sponsored projects
Teamwork
how to manage/work with your scrum team – more of the soft skills you need to be a leader
Teamwork
I do find a gap and issue when projects not involving my team to change code but want our help for their system to call our service during their sprints – this is not in our plans and we have to accommodate based on prioritization.
Teamwork
keep the team motivated and in line with working in an agile environment
Teamwork
tips to being effective when you have development in India and other scrum team members on the East and West coast
Teamwork
What is the communication model from the PMO to the scrum teams when changes are being made to the processes? There is no communication today.
Teamwork
Be open to new ways of doing things—get feedback from your core team members in one on one meetings as well as extended team members.
Teamwork
Constantly have to remind folks to enter sub- tasks
Teamwork
Cross team conflicts (DXD/DEV/QA)
Teamwork
Difficulty focusing in long grooming sessions
Teamwork
how to be more effective with getting the full scrum team to move forward more efficiently and assisting one another
Teamwork
The best way to explain Agile to our technology partners who may or may not be familiar with Agile and how it works
Teamwork
Understanding how to Engage our technology partners (this is done very differently when working on an Agile Project vs. a Waterfall Project)
Teamwork
What is the communication and engagement model when other scrum teams are engaged?
TrainX
Details on the different trainx environments and how they work – Some of my current work is running into issues with teams testing changes in D- SIT vs. RQA, etc. Knowing where things are and how they work together, especially when work is split across scrums will help save time for the Dev and QA resources within the team. If we can plan the work (dev, testing, UAT) accordingly, it will help. Many times we are the liaison to other LOBs, and knowing when “full pictures” will be available to demo or UAT is often crucial. I know there is an “official” recommendation to do all integration testing at the end, but that often won’t work when needing to communicate with LOBs and receive their buy- in for deployment.
TrainX
3 weeks is too ambitious for Wells Fargo given the complexity of all the different systems and instability of environments
TrainX
Helping the business understand delivery dates (they are used to knowing when a project will implement and an Agile Project most likely won’t have an implementation date up front (I was asked for this all of the time by the business)
TrainX
How to work with constraints of all the release overhead of releasing every 3 weeks
TrainX
Look ahead is challenging to do since we are operating still on tight timeline for MVP
TrainX
TrainX decouples teams from each other so that they can develop in parallel
TrainX
what it really is and how it fits into the overall agile process. Clarify the 3 week sprint and implementation statements. People actually think we are building the complex items in 3 weeks and turning it on in production without any requirements, design.
Value Streams
Value Stream is a big black box that I have little visibility into
Value Streams
Value Streams and best practices for coordinating across scrums
Value Streams
VS Processes are still evolving and still confusing – We are still waiting for the VS DXD team to be established
Value Streams
WFVC Value stream cadence; Relevant “end- to- end process flows” (big picture)
Value Streams
a step- by- step value stream process and artifacts flow
Value Streams
How VS works
Value Streams
The purpose of the VS
Value Streams
When does the decomposition for a new project begin? Before BSW or afterwards?
Waterfall Teams
Best practices for engaging other Application groups who do not follow WFVC Agile methodology. Or other groups like WIM who have their own Agile practices
Waterfall Teams
How does compliance fit into the agile model? They don’t seem to have any understanding of their role in agile.
Waterfall Teams
how to best coordinate with non- Scrum teams and stakeholders, especially Compliance, Legal, Risk, and non- Agile teams that we are dependent on.
Waterfall Teams
New procedures for things that need to work differently because resources outside of the scrum team need to be included (e.g., DXD work as only have 1 DXD member assigned to scrum, Legal & Compliance approvals, ADA testing, etc.) would be helpful. Especially for ADA reviews as engagement and coordination with external vendors are required.
Waterfall Teams
reaching out to waterfall teams
Waterfall Teams
requests for scrum team support outside of WFVC and we need to help guide these partners through the value stream process
Waterfall Teams
waterfall teams reaching out to us needing documentation and final requirements for items deep in the backlog
Waterfall Teams
We also struggle in working with our partnering teams that don’t support the agile processes (i.e. Compliance said they can’t approve things every 3 weeks and our team can’t expect that).
Waterfall Teams
Approvals take a long time - sometimes it falls out of the 3- week iteration
Waterfall Teams
How does Scrum works with Projects – I have a project that cuts across 7 Scrum teams
Waterfall Teams
How to deal with timing of Risk & Compliance and how to navigate
WF Transition Plan
I think we need to all be aligned on how to work in agile and what’s expected before we want to further our learnings. Knowledge without use in practice is not very helpful.
WF Transition Plan
specific Wells Fargo challenges following agile such as complexity of multiple back end systems, having to work with agile and waterfall applications within a single sprint, having multiple platforms on a sprint that do not follow same calendar release dates, etc
WF Transition Plan
how the full company is shifting to Agile
WF Transition Plan
How to navigate Wells Fargo, need a tactical plan
WF Transition Plan
Test cases are required to be provided in both JIRA AND ALM tools, duplicative requirements
WF Transition Plan
Tips and tools for doing Agile in such a huge, disbursed, segregated, highly regulated company with complex systems and tons of technical debt, and with not enough foundational changes in place to successfully implement Agile
Workshop Customization
First and foremost what needs to stop is the silliness that when scrum teams are put together they go through “workshop” training merely because we are new. We have 8 core teammates assigned to our scrum team, each with over 5 years agile experience (if not more). We know what we are doing or we wouldn’t be able to navigate the ND Tier 1 and 2 on such urgent timelines. Granting us a refresher for the 5 hour conference option would be the best news our beaten- down- already- soon- to- be- formal- scrum team could get.
Workshop Customization
Is the training mentioned below only available to POs who are leading a scrum team or to all Product Managers? I think it is valuable to all Product Managers irrespective of whether they have a scrum team or not because they will be part of that ecosystem anyways. Like I will be working closely with the PO of the scrum team who is taking on our work and having the same training as him will help me be on the same page as it relates to execution of my work and also empowers me to communicate the process details to my LOB partners.
Workshop Customization
One other recommendation I have is to make all the examples and materials relevant to how things work at Wells Fargo. I think there were some misleading bits of information provided in the initial workshop (there are no more projects, if you find something out later or have future improvements you can just add new requirements) that do not apply to the agile model here. Things were often explained regarding agile in general, not tailored to the processes and constraints in place at WF. Also making sure that all examples are relevant to work that we will be doing is key. Many of the examples were not representative of the types of requests we’d actually see come across and therefore didn’t trigger questions and potential challenges that could be resolved with a larger group in the initial workshop training.
Workshop Customization
workshops are always helpful! Having an array of them, to mix and match is probably the best option – though getting the uninformed (me among them) to realize which they need or may benefit from….that may be closer to magic
Workshop Customization
A good workshop description of contents to help me decide if there is good enough value for me to take two days away from my job
Workshop Customization
how to best navigate processes
Workshop Customization
I think Agile, both in concept and in practice, is very easy to follow and understand. Where teams tend to get tripped up, is with the extended tools and administrative processes that support it.
Workshop Customization
There are at least four different types of POs:
1. STM to TrainX
2. Non- STM to TrainX
3. Non- STM to Non- TrainX
4. Non- WF and documentation light to WF and documentation heavy
Workshop Customization
Have tailored training for POs of capability scrum teams vs. regular scrum teams. Capability POs don’t have the same exact responsibilities nor approach to their work as the regular project teams
Workshop Customization
training should be combined with scrum masters as well



last updated september 2019