I became a CSM last week: Certified ScrumMaster after taking a thoroughly enjoyable course over the weekend. I read my first book on Agile and scrum back in 2007 and have taken a number of courses since then. I also got a PMP along the way. However, this was simply the best course ever! Check out www.beardedeagle.com for their excellent training.
One of the things the trainer said that got me immediately stirred up was that in many cases the closest analogy for the Product Owner in scrum is the project manager in traditional style of project management. (There is no role of project manager in scrum). This got me really thinking as I always believed that the product owner would be someone from the business side (bringing this into the Wall Street Banking IT arena). I could not for the life of me envision a senior manager in Product Control, Front Office, Operations, etc taking Scrum training and playing by the rules of Scrum (Perhaps I shouldn't be so pessimistic about it, but if you work in Investment Banking IT, you'll probably see my point). So I had determined that Scrum wouldn't really work well in my environment and that I would have to continue to act as traditional project manager and use a modified scrum-like methodology.
But lo and behold, the Product Owner = Project Manager solved the problem for me! And it makes perfect sense. The traditional project manager is the one that has to manage the stakeholders, assess the priorities, etc. That makes for a perfect product owner! And now under this light, it all seems work-able now. Of course, in some instances I'll have to play dual role of Product Owner & Scrum Master (which is dangerous as it's a bit too powerful) but I have some room now to empower my colleagues in running our projects. I can give the role of Scrum Master to one of my Analysts and have him work with the Dev team to accomplish our goals while I can step back and concentrate on other things.
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