How Poor Product Owners Guarantee Failure
It pains us to see development teams and product owners in the DoD and large primes failing due to mismanagement. Blurred boundaries and not managing expectations result in either a combination of 1) an unusable product, 2) missed deadlines, and 3) blown budgets.
To new product owners / product managers, Josh Jordan often says:
"You have three levers: Quality, Time, and Cost. You can only pull two."
Pulling all three levers will screw the pooch. There is nuance and a ton of scrum-lording process to this that comes with a lot of experience. If you are failing to deliver on time, on budget, and with the proper features, it doesn't' have to be this way.
Pull Quality and Time Levers: If you have a specific quality you wish to hit (in terms of features and usability) and you have a specific date you wish to release, then you need to be willing spend what is necessary to hire the people to get the job done. You can't dictate the Cost.
Pull Quality and Cost Levers: If you have a specific quality you wish to hit and you have a set budget to spend on development, then you need to be patient until the work is completed. You can't dictate the Time.
Pull Time and Cost Levers: If you have a specific time you want to release, and you have a specific cost, then you need to be willing to accept what is completed at that time. Meaning that you either decrease features and/or usability. You can't dictate the Quality.
