#4 Chief Product Owner: Bad idea – Wilbert Seele (Prowareness)

In this fourth episode of the podcast I chat with Wilbert Seele, my colleague at Prowareness. He’s an Agile Scaling expert and ‘Continuous Disruptor’. I asked him on the podcast not to discuss tips and tricks for the Product Owner, but to discuss the idea of a ‘Chief’ Product Owner and why he thinks that is a really bad idea or even a really, really, really bad idea. In this interview we also discuss the importance of knowing your problem, translating that into your process/product design and avoiding the sunk cost fallacy. And I diss accountants. To be sure: I do think there is value in doing proper accounting, as the right side of the manifesto: supporting the value adding activities and the individuals and interactions. So I meant it half-jokingly. And ironically we conclude our conversation with the advice to always take Product Ownership seriously! 😉

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Links & resources from this episode

• Wilbert on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wjseele/
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-dont-like-chief-product-owners-wilbert-seele
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-dont-like-chief-product-owners-safe-work-version-seele
• Read more about the Sunk Cost fallacy and other thinking traps in Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

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Learn more about Product Ownership at the Prowareness Agile Academy

• Product Owner training: https://www.agileacademy.nl/training/?eventtitle=professional-scrum-product-owner-training
• Product Owner Advanced training: https://www.agileacademy.nl/training/?eventtitle=product-owner-advanced
• SAFe Product Management/Product Owner training: https://www.agileacademy.nl/training/?eventtitle=safe-product-management-product-owner-training