Drucker's Blueprint - The Effective Product Owner Evolves the Process

I was re-reading Peter F. Drucker’s The Effective Executive when I saw a novel insight. I saw a way to better integrate Agile transformations, especially in software, into the organization. The connection comes from the skills an executive needs to be effective. Drucker identifies several of these in his book.

Consider your business processes. Every process has a baseline. The effective contributors will change the process to better serve the customer. The Effective Executive takes these local optimizations and codifies them into a more effective whole.

This sounds like what most organizations do with their internal software. We codify some business processes. Ideally, we make the process more consistent, and simpler. Thus, the people who did it before get value out of the software.

And the tip of the spear in any of these efforts is the Product Owner. Product Owners are key parts of an Agile team’s development processes, managing their product backlog and overseeing everyone’s tasks. Because their role is to make sure the team is meeting the needs of the organization, they are incredibly knowledgeable in the space. Sometimes they are even the top performers and often know their previous work deeply.

Now in the role of Product Owner, they can apply their expertise to their position. They guide the development of new and better tools for their area. They make the call about what and how to map the original process into a new digital form. They can tailor and improve the processes. They are acting just like Drucker’s Effective Executive would.

This view of Product Ownership highlights a critical point. For any Agile transformation to thrive, we must realize that it was never just about translating existing processes into software! It has always been about discovering new, more effective ways to deliver value, which requires a keen insight into the business itself.

That discernment, that judgment, is what Drucker was calling out in the Effective Executive. The Product Owner exercises that judgment in software teams. The Effective Product Owner codifies the local optimizations into a more effective, systemic whole. And in so doing, becomes a more Effective Executive.