The Product Owner Performance Review

Giving a good review is hard

Giving a good review is hard. You want to provide a fair evaluation of your team member grounded in results and objective assessments, but how do you do that for a complex job such as Product Owner? Much of what they do is achieved through influence rather than direct contribution, and even the business performance of the team is hard to establish (see my related post on evaluating the strength of an engineering team).

An approach I have found effective is grounded in two parts:

• An assessment of results using the Value, Flow, Quality (VFQ) framework,
• An assessment of key competencies that are correlated with the ability to deliver these results.

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Using VFQ to measure results

The Value, Flow, Quality framework from Emergn is a powerful tool for assessing the effectiveness of a team as highlighted in the Engineering post. It is therefore fitting to use the same framework to assess the effectiveness of the team PO. The performance review would start by documenting actions that the PO has taken that have made a tangible improvement in these dimensions. Getting team and stakeholder validation adds to the strength of each endorsement.

• Value — How has the PO contributed to the customer value delivered by the team in the period of the review? Look for specific examples — what epics and stories did they introduce and/or refine, what prioritization choices did they make that optimized for customer value, what learnings did they bring in from active collaboration with customers, what quantitative or qualitative analyses did they deliver, what relationships did they nurture that led to greater insights and better choices?
• Flow — How did the PO support for rapid flow of ideas through the system? Look for examples of effective collaboration with customers or partners to refine ideas into increments, effective capture and writing of user stories, grooming to ensure most important stories are worked on first, strong collaboration with developers to ensure user stories are well understood and the minimization of iterations on requirements within a sprint.
• Quality — How has the PO ensured the work product is high quality and fit for purpose for the customer and that the health of the system is maintained? Did the work generate errors or failures? Did it subsequently need to be refactored? Was technical debt and component health ignored leading to costly maintenance? Did they effectively capture customer feedback post launch? Did they report out on what they learned?

Competencies

The types of competencies that make a good PO will vary by context and domain which is why you should start with evaluating the results. Nonetheless, below are a number of characteristics that are typically displayed by a strong PO. In the evaluation look for examples that support the demonstration of the competency.

• Clarity of purpose. Can the PO explain clearly what they are trying to achieve and how? A team is most effective if they know where they are going and why.
• Research and learning driven. What qualitative or quantitative research supported different decisions in the backlog? Have they been proactive in gathering missing information to support decisions? Are they transparent about when decisions are data driven vs intuition or politically driven? Do they change direction when confronted with new information that invalidates previous beliefs?
• Ability to break down a problem and structure information. Has the PO shown the ability to decompose complex problems into a way that makes it easier to digest and comprehend? Have they set out how their objective breaks down into a learning agenda that is then driving the initiatives that form the backlog?
• Communication and collaboration. Are they communicating clearly to the team and stakeholders? Are they effectively working through differences of opinion? Do they have the support and trust of the team and stakeholders?
• Execution excellence. Are they well organized? Do they set and communicate clear goals, deliver well written stories on time, contribute effectively in team conversations, identify and improve obstacles to good execution?
• Ability to make hard choices. Have they made effective choices in support of maximizing value, even in the face of stakeholder opposition? Did they assess the full set of consequences, and were they able to clearly articulate and gain buy-in for these decisions?
• Domain knowledge — are they well informed about the domain, both from a market and technical perspective? What initiatives have they taken to improve their knowledge such as courses, conferences or other types of learning?
• Strategic thinking and innovation — have they improved the quality and content of the work by taking a more strategic or innovative perspective on goals or methods, and by persuading others to support the change?

These questions are far from comprehensive, but they can form the outline for a conversation with the PO and for getting feedback from their key collaborators. They provide a framework that touches on the most important things a PO should be doing and with the answers to these questions you should be in a good place to assess where the PO is performing and where the growth opportunities lie. And in the end, focus on the main thing: what value did you generate for your customers this year?