How To Be An Effective Product Owner (The Getting Ready for Work Game) - By Dan Greenberg

 

Purpose: Learn the art of prioritization

Tools: If you are in a big room, each participant will need a pad of post-its and a wall on which to work. If you are virtual, have each participant use a designated “wall” on their section of the virtual board. You may have to be creative.

Round One:

Write down everything you did this morning between waking up and arriving at work, one activity per post-it. Also on each one write down the amount of time that activity took.

EXAMPLE

Add up the total amount of time – in this example, 110 minutes. So, in this example, let’s say your alarm went off this morning at 7:00 AM and you sat down at your desk ready to work at 8:50 AM.

Round Two:

You hit the snooze a couple of times this morning and didn’t get out of bed until 7:20 AM but you are still required to be sitting at your desk ready to work at 8:50 AM. Having lost 20 minutes, which post-its will you eliminate from your morning? You decide to forgo your shave (5-o-clock shadow is in style these days) and skip the coffee – you’ll grab a cup from the work cafeteria later today. Pull those two post-its off and move them to the bottom of your board.

Round Three:

You accidentally set your alarm for 8:00 and not 7:00 (dang you daylight savings hour!). Now you have 50 total minutes. What will you keep in the sprint? You decide you are going to brush your teeth, shower, get dressed, drive to work, and get to your desk (50 mins total). You’ll have to wait till lunch to eat – but on the plus side you’ve read that intermittent fasting is all the rage. Pull the post-its for cook breakfast and eat breakfast and move them just above the brew coffee and shave ones from round 2.

Final Round:

This is not a drill! Your phone died, you overslept, and you’ve awaken at 8:10. You’ve got 40 minutes! You will skip the shower this morning – you showered last night and so a splash of water on your face and some deodorant and cologne will have to do! Move the shower post-it just above the breakfast ones.

Congratulations, you’ve just prioritized the backlog!

Debrief - How Can I Use This?

You can use this technique with your backlog. You have a backlog of ten billion items. Okay, let's say it turned out you only had 3 months and then the entire company was being dissolved. What could you get done in 3 months that would leave an impact on the world after the company went bankrupt? Move those items to the top and the rest of the backlog to the bottom. Next round - the company is going insolvent in a month. What would you have to cut out if you now only have one month left to leave your mark on the world? Keep iterating until now you only have today. What is one small item you could get done today that would leave an impact? That story slides up to the top of the backlog.