Table or Booth?

What Makes a Great Product Owner?

A friend of mine is working with scrum.org and was asking questions about product ownership.  This got me thinking.  So, I threw together this quick list of things that, I think, make a great Product Owner.

The Real Value of Money

Investment advisors like to talk about about inflation these days in terms of raw money supply/purchasing power.  But there's more to this.

Today's Scarcity: Reputation

In the recent InfoQ article about free Test Driven Development classes in our new 'Gift Economy', there is a misguided notion that fundamental economics have somehow evolved to such an extent that scarcity isn't an economic driver any more:

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/agile-training-gift;jsessionid=0E73B11FC39B86C6019D0CE4B3DD1307

I disagree.  As I state in my comment to the article,  I suspect the people pushing this gimmick do so more to attack capitalism as a whole than for any other reason.

Earnings-Based Consumption

We cannot spend our way to good economic health, even in the short run.  We have to produce.

John Stiglitz, Chief Economist of the World Bank from 1997 - 2002 took callers on CSPAN this morning, one of which was a democrat who suggested (paraphrasing), "With the economic downturn and the tax payers being the problem, with the bad mortgages and such, why not just give every American one million dollars? Then people would spend money, helping businesses, and letting people keep their houses and jobs."

Why stop at one million?? Why not 10? How about 100 million? We'd all be set for life.

I'm all for consumption as a important part of market health. However, the problem with consumption based on money given versus money earned is that, when given, you have no skin in the game. No risk taken. This changes everything. If you lose it all because of a bad decision, oh well. 

With money earned, you have a vested interest in not seeing it disappear. With money earned, you do your best to get the maximum value you can for every penny. This kind of incentive works.  Money-given based consumption eventually reduces productivity to point of total dependency.  This is socialism and, as history shows, has a strong track record for destroying markets.

Enterprise Bearware

The price customers pay for software and the level of usability they get with that software is inversely proportional.  As long as it solves a big business problem or two, it doesn't matter how easy it is to actually use the stuff.

Hurricane of Hope

If you haven't seen Robert Tracinski's controversial piece about the New Orleans disaster, check it out.  Whether or not you agree with his position, it's atypical, intelligent commentary on the matter.

Google's Invisible Hand

"So far they have only demonstrated excellent intentions, but the invisible hand of the market is quite a thing, and you often find it stuck right up your ass, or in your pocket looking for your wallet"

- Paul Ford, about the Semantic Web, Google and their increasing control over the dissemination of internet data.

It makes me wonder: will Google's dominance inevitably become a dangerous thing?  Or will the invisible hand eventually demand safer alternatives as well?

Keeping it Fresh

"Selling web-based software through ISPs is like selling sushi through vending machines"

- Paul Graham, in Hackers and Painters, Big Ideas From the Computer Age.

He makes a good case for owning the hardware as well as the software.  From a startup perspective, I can see how it would be tempting to do otherwise and consider outsourcing this.

Open-Source Forces Commoditization?

OReilly recently reports that JBuilder is open-sourcing their IDE.  Is this more proof of IDE commoditization?

It makes me wonder; does open-sourcing force commodization?  You might argue this as a tactic used by second or third place competitors to grab market share, forcing the commoditization process.  It's hard to argue that this can't at least be partially successful.

On Career Choices...

"One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass.  Meaning that unpleasant work pays."

- Paul Graham, Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas

A few other useful programming career-oriented links:

• How to Keep Your Job
• Discussion with Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt
• Advice from Monster.com
• Paul Graham: Hackers and Painters
• Keep Offshoring From Taking You