Product managers and product owners can engage and motivate their teams to delight customers - or they can distract and dishearten their teams.  Ron Lichty has been a product manager, a CTO, and a VP leading both development organizations and product teams. As a development leader, he regards product managers who "get it" as key partners.  Here are 16 ways to engage and motivate product teams - to ensure that together that you delight customers! Points to take away: ▪ Delighting customers is the metric to which we should manage ▪ Delighting customers relies on tight collaboration between product managers, product owners, and development teams ▪ Product managers and development leaders are uniquely positioned to, together, motivate product teams ▪ Product managers and product owners are uniquely positioned to connect the dots BIo: Ron Lichty has, for 30-plus years, championed delighting customers. He believes that strong product/engineering collaboration is essential to achieving that goal. Ron co-authored the Addison-Wesley book Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams (http://www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net) and annually coauthors the Study of Product Team Performance (http://www.ronlichty.com/study.html). Ron spent seven years as a programmer, two years as a product manager, and 25 years managing product and development organizations at all levels - to VP of engineering, VP of product and CTO - at companies ranging in size from tiny startups to Charles Schwab, Stanford and Apple.  He now consults across that realm, taking on fractional interim VP Engineering and acting CTO roles, training teams in agile, training managers in managing software people and teams, and coaching development teams and executives in making software development hum. (http://www.ronlichty.com) Ron has long been a popular speaker at product, development and agile meetups and conferences. 

1. Product Owners: How to Get Your
Development Team to Love You
Ron Lichty, principal, Ron Lichty Consulting
author, Managing the Unmanageable
www.RonLichty.com www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net1

2. * Addison Wesley published October 2012
*
2

3. Ron Lichty,
Managing Development Product Teams
SOFTWEST
3

4. 4
Untangling Knots in
Development and Product Teams

5. 5
Transforming Chaos to Clarity

6. Training Teams: Scrum and Agile
1-4 weeks
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 6

7. …and training Managers,
Product Managers Execs
* Addison Wesley published October 2012 7

8. Rules of Thumb / Nuggets of Wisdom*
* 300 in the book
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 8

9. Rules of Thumb / Nuggets of Wisdom*
Brooks’s Law: Adding manpower to a late
software project makes it later.
– Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
* 300 in the book
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 9

10. In the beginning, everyone will talk about scope,
and budget, and schedule, but in the end,
nobody really cares about any of those things.
The only thing they care about is this:
People will love your software, or they won’t.
So that’s the only criterion to which you
should truly manage.
—Joseph Kleinschmidt, CTO
* 300 in the book
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 10
Rules of Thumb / Nuggets of Wisdom*

11. What Motivates Programmers
• Making a difference…
From Managing the Unmanageable:, by Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty, based on Frederick Herzberg’s seminal work
in the 1950s identifying and differentiating motivators and de-motivators. 11

12. How to Get
Your Development Team
to Love You
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 12

13. Share the Big Picture
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 13

14. Share the Big Picture
• Connect the dots
– The big picture
– What each team member is contributing
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 14

15. Partner
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 15

16. 16
Partner
ScrumTeam.jpg (from Exploring Scrum- the Fundamentals, by Dan Rawsthorne Doug Shimp)
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You

17. Prioritize
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 17

18. Prioritize
18Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You

19. Prioritize
• Be the source of clarity!
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 19

20. Share the “What” not the “How”
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 20

21. Share the “What” not the “How”
As a some kind of user
I want to do something
in order to accomplish some goal
Who
What
Why
Never “How”
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 21

22. Delight Your Customers
• Making a difference…
From Managing the Unmanageable:, by Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty, based on Frederick Herzberg’s seminal work
in the 1950s identifying and differentiating motivators and de-motivators. 22

23. Block the Noise
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 23

24. Block the Noise
--John Evans photo
Be a damper to the noise. --Joe Kleinschmidt, CTO
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 24

25. Annual Study
of Product Team Performance
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 25

26. Support Agile Values
Methodology
You
Use
Methodology
You
Associate
with
Increase
Profits
Agile
Blended
(Some
Waterfall
and
Some
Agile)
Lean
Waterfall
Agile
73.9%
13.0%
9.8%
0.0%
Blended
(Some
Waterfall
and
Some
Agile)
31.8%
46.2%
10.6%
6.1%
Lean
14.3%
0.0%
42.9%
14.3%
Waterfall
15.8%
50.0%
18.4%
13.2%
Don't
Know
5.3%
42.1%
26.3%
5.3%
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 26

27. Make Trade-Offs
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 27

28. Make Trade-Offs
• Scope and Schedule
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 28

29. Make Trade-Offs
• Honor velocity
• Focus on fomenting amazing teamwork
– on supporting the team becoming high
performance
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 29

30. Be Available
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 30

31. Be Available
• Be there with clarity
– with the priorities / with the backlog
– with the stories
– with the acceptance tests
– with the detail
– with the clarity / the disambiguation
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 31

32. Let Developers Focus
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 32

33. Let Developers Focus
• Multitasking?
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 33

34. 34
Let the Team Focus
ScrumTeam.jpg (from Exploring Scrum- the Fundamentals, by Dan Rawsthorne Doug Shimp)
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You

35. Have the Data
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 35

36. Have the Data
• “If you don’t have time to calculate value,
we don’t have time to calculate cost.”
--Jim Highsmith, agile coach and guru
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 36

37. Have the Data
• You need to know about this classic book:
Software by Numbers
Mark Denne Jane Cleland-Huang
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 37

38. Have the Data
• You need to know about this classic book:
Software by Numbers
Mark Denne Jane Cleland-Huang
– the source of
• Minimum Marketable Features (MMFs)
• Incremental Funding Methodology (IFM)
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 38

39. Engage Users
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 39

40. Engage Users
• Remember: It’s about delighting users!
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 40

41. Listen
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 41

42. Listen
• Support a culture of communication
– at every level
– with everyone
• up, down, within and across
• “We have two ears and one mouth. Use them in
this ratio.”
— Kimberly Wiefling
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 42

43. Incorporate Engineering’s Stories
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 43

44. Incorporate Engineering’s Stories
• opportunities in the code
• technical risk
• reducing technical debt
• refactoring
• automation
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 44

45. Incorporate Engineering’s Stories
• Webinar w Greg Cohen:
http://www.slideshare.net/RonLichty/
prioritizing-the-product-backlog-aipmm-webinar
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 45

46. Incorporate Engineering’s Stories
• Webinar w Greg Cohen:
http://www.slideshare.net/RonLichty/
prioritizing-the-product-backlog-aipmm-webinar
If you’re just using your engineers to code,
you’re losing half their value.
--Marty Cagan
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 46

47. Be Tech Savvy
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 47

48. Theme Your Sprints
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 48

49. Support Agile Values
• Create an Agile Culture

50. It’s the Values
• Support Agile Values
The Agile Manifesto
– We value:
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan
-- http://agilemanifesto.org/
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 50

51. Agile Values Inspire Great Teams
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 51

52. It’s the Values
• That self-organizing team thing
By Michaelblinkpipe (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAn_Abcam_stand_up_meeting_using_BlinkPipe_video_conferencing..png

53. Agile Values Inspire Great Teams
• Build projects around motivated
individuals
• Trust… to get the job done
• Face-to-face conversation
• Self-organizing teams
• The team reflects, …tunes, …adjusts
-- http://agilemanifesto.org/
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 53

54. It’s the Values
• That self-organizing team thing
– It’s all about shared leadership
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 54

55. Projects Not Suitable for Agile?
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 55

56. Projects Not Suitable for Agile?
• Micromanagement
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 56

57. Projects Not Suitable for Agile?
• Micromanagement disrupts Agile
• Micromanagement prevents Best Teams
• Micromanagement prevents Learning
• Micromanaged teams become order-takers
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 57

58. Projects Not Suitable for Agile?
• Micromanagement disrupts Agile
• Micromanagement prevents Best Teams
• Micromanagement prevents Learning
• Micromanaged teams become order-takers
• Agile calls for everyone on the team to step up
• Micromanagement causes everyone to step back
Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 58

59. Ron Lichty Consulting
• Interim acting CTO/VP Eng roles / making development hum
– http://ronlichty.com, Ron@RonLichty.com
• The book:
Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools Insights for Managing Software People Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net
• The study:
The Study of Product Team Performance
– http://www.ronlichty.com/study.html
• Training: Agile for Teams
The Agile Manager
Managing Software People and Teams
59

60. Ron Lichty Consulting
• Interim acting CTO/VP Eng roles / making development hum
– http://ronlichty.com, Ron@RonLichty.com
• The book:
Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools Insights for Managing Software People Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net
• The study:
The Study of Product Team Performance
– http://www.ronlichty.com/study.html
• Training: Agile for Teams
The Agile Manager
Managing Software People and Teams
60