Proposed Session:

Session Title: How to Own a Really Big Complex Product

Description: Product Owner is the most misunderstood and misapplied role in Scrum. The concept barely works on small products… it almost always fails in larger enterprises where many teams work together on complex enterprise deliverables. We hear about people implementing product councils and product owner teams but that seems to miss the point of having single wring-able neck. This talk explores the role of Product Owner and breaks down just what it takes to do this role well. We’ll explore a capability driven model for scaling the PO role and keeping us all focused on building the right products.

Leader(s): Mike Cottmeyer

Mike is an independent agile coach that provides agile training, agile coaching, and agile transformation services designed to help pragmatically, incrementally, and safely introduce agile methods into any sized organization.

Prior to becoming and independent coach, Mike was the Regional Vice President of Pillar Technology Southeast. He was responsible for new client acquisition and engagement design. He stayed involved as a hands-on agile coach and trainer for larger and more complex agile initiatives. His specialty was and is large programs in complex multi-methodology environments.

Prior to joining Pillar, Mike was an agile coach and trainer with VersionOne where he helped customers lead large-scale agile transformations and adopt agile project management best practices. Before joining VersionOne, Mike was a Senior Project Manager for CheckFree Corporation where he led a portfolio of agile projects for their online banking and bill payment business unit.

Mike is a certified PMP project manager and a certified ScrumMaster. Mike was involved with the creation of the DSDM Agile Project Leader certification, holds this certification at the Foundation, Practitioner, and Examiner levels. Mike was named an honorary member of the DSDM consortium and served on the board of APLN and the Lean Software and Systems Consortium. He currently co-leads the PMI Agile Community of Practice.