4.9.3 New roles and roles debt
In the longitudinal study, we saw all types of PD. PDs were mainly identified and discussed through retrospectives in the company and better understood in the interviews.
Roles debt: Synchronization and alignment debt were evident early in the study and were problems that existed over several years. For example, in Company E, they introduced a role that they called “product owner” and assigned people to that role without explaining or describing what the role entailed in detail. It was believed that a short memo was enough. The product owner’s responsibilities were mainly related to being a team leader. However, many of the people assigned to that role were confused, as some were familiar with the product owner role in Scrum. Further, as there were many POs, they needed to collaborate. But because they had a different understanding of the role, communication and collaboration problems emerged and lasted for months. In a retrospective with the managers and the POs, the role ambiguity was identified, and action points were specified.
A new description was created explaining that the role had responsibility for the team, prioritizing the business needs and coordinating with the stakeholders. However, even though the role was more precise, the work was difficult to perform because an enormous amount of coordination and communication was required for the POs. Consequently, a new role was introduced – a coordinator to coordinate between the POs and the management. This person was to represent the POs in management meetings. The effect was supposed to be less work and less coordination for the POs. However, as the POs they were taken out of important decision processes, their work became slower as decisions took a long time and several misunderstandings happened.
Redesigning processes: Again, the process and roles needed to change. After a few months, the coordinator role was removed. The POs were again included in the weekly prioritization and sync meetings with the management, and a new process was designed for this meeting. As the POs became more and more experienced (after a year), the process was modified, and the POs were given more and more authority and could make more decisions without having to ask others.
Still, the process was flawed. The POs needed to coordinate with many stakeholders. The reason was to make sure all stakeholders were informed, involved, and committed to the work performed. While the effect of the process and roles were ok, the work took too much time. The solution was then to invite all key stakeholders to the coordination meeting for the program. Instead of POs reaching out and informing others, the key stakeholders had to come to them, which worked much better.