Author: Patryk Nosalik, PMP
Late last Spring, PMI Switzerland held its first Open Spaces meeting. It was really warming to see so much genuine enthusiasm for a novel meeting format, on top of that, we did it online. And when I hear many people are missing the human networking component in other more typical webinars, one of the benefits of interactive formats is that it allows for the creation of meaningful connection. So it was here, from the people contributing and participating in the Open Space, that I was introduced to two very engaging Agilists, María Cortés Astudillo, and Nicolas Pagès.
It turned out Maria and Nicolas were keen to work with me and colleagues at PMI to create another interactive workshop, based on their successful experiences in the Agile Suisse community (agilesuisse.ch). They proposed a discussion about the Product Owner role.
A quick search or browse of LinkedIn suggests the Product Owner (PO) is a much misunderstood or unappreciated role, and personally in the way this role was applied in my previous professional context, also left me with many unanswered questions. I’d love to share them with you, but the unique point of this workshop is that the participants who register are invited to send in via a form their 1-3 questions they have about the product owner role, be it as naïve, profound, basic, deep, personal or general as they like. Therefore, in order to not bias the event agenda before its inception, I’m having a tough time not sharing them with you!
Nevertheless I shared this concept with both my Romandie events colleagues and Online Events back in July. We have now created a workshop you can see on our events page, https://pmi-switzerland.ch/index.php/events/events-list/product-owner-secrets-an-interactive-workshop
and invite you warmly to both explore the Product Owner role, and to experience this meeting format which you can take away and use for your own facilitations.
The questions we will receive, up to a week before the event, will be analysed by Maria, Nicolas and me. We will create the agenda probably starting with fundamentals before taking a deeper dive, but it will be wholly dependent on participants' input – so that could be you . Just register and you’ll get the link to the very easy form. It may be that we facilitate the discussion so that knowledgeable participants can answer the question, or it may be that the named expert speakers will do so. Of course we would expect to have time for more open discussion as we go along.
So if you liked our previous Open Space or want to learn something new and be heard by the community, make a note to join this Product Owner workshop on the 13th October. Our facilitators are María Cortés Astudillo, and Nicolas Pagès. Maria is an industrial engineer, she is PMP, Professional Scrum Master, Professional Product Owner and Empowering People at the Workplace certified. Nicolas is a junior coach in design thinking, certified Scrum master and product owner, and has also practiced roles such as super key user, project coordinator, IT solution expert and in the last year, business analyst. Read more about Maria and Nicolas in their fascinating bios on our events page, and then challenge them with questions about the Product Owner role. Remember, the uniqueness of this workshop and relevance to you depends on those who have sent their questions in at registration (but circa 1-2 weeks before), so don’t delay!
Finally, such workshops benefit from diversity, so share the message with colleagues on Linkedin, friends at work, it will all help harness a collaborative collective intelligence for the benefit of all participants.
Spoiler alert – if we get as many questions as we estimate, then based on experience, we may do some sort of follow up 3-4 weeks later for the most passionate amongst you!