Full-Stack Product Ownership: Breaking Silos, Amplifying Value

The problem

Organizations embarking on an agile transformation often request detailed definitions of roles and responsibilities, reflecting a desire for clarity in behavior and authority.

This pattern is typical among traditionally structured companies new to agile methodologies. We have seen such behavior recently when an organization at a critical juncture runs into this scenario. The company faced significant challenges due to siloed structures, which hindered its ability to deliver value effectively and efficiently. There was a marked concern during discussions on organizational restructuring as established norms appeared to disintegrate. This led to a strong request for detailed role definitions, particularly within product ownership. The company had segmented product responsibilities across various specialized roles, such as product managers, product owners, product analysts, and business analysts. These silos significantly impeded the company's value delivery.

Such requests for detailed role definitions are understandable. Organizations confronting the need to simplify entrenched structures and behaviors often experience fear and a desire to revert to familiar paradigms. However, what is required in these situations is not a step-by-step guide but a fundamental shift from rigid boundaries and rules. Organizations must dissolve traditional lanes and embrace a more flexible approach to achieve true agility, especially concerning product ownership.

Problems with product ownership today

Some key factors contributing to today's diluted product ownership include the division of product responsibilities, the need for more decision-making authority, and insufficient experience. For these and many other factors, the space of product ownership today faces serious problems.

Fragmented Responsibilities

Splitting Product Owner responsibilities among multiple roles hinders value flow and slows decision-making. Roles like Product Managers, Business Analysts, Product Analysts, and team-level Product Owners often work in isolation, causing confusion and delays. Teams need a more precise communication chain, leading to slow and sometimes inaccurate decisions. This fragmented approach burdens teams and blocks efficient delivery.

Limited Authority

Product Owners are reduced to backlog administrators with little influence in many organizations. Their accountability could be more diluted due to divided responsibilities and decision-making power retained by executives. Hierarchical structures and traditional behaviors further limit their role. Consequently, Product Owners often work in isolation, handling predefined solutions with fixed deadlines and minimal interaction with customers and stakeholders.

Inexperience and Ineffective Guidance

Many organizations need help to adopt modern practices for effective product teams, confining the Product Owner role within outdated patterns. New Product Owners often need more experience and support from project management or business analysis backgrounds. This gap between responsibilities and capabilities makes maximizing their Scrum Teams' value challenging.

Team Disconnection from Value

Scrum Teams, like Product Owners, are often disempowered from owning value. Many organizations focus teams solely on delivery work, excluding them from strategy, creativity, and user research. This results in teams following a set process that requires them to understand their customers or the value they create, limiting their role to merely producing features.

This disconnect destroys the team's sense of purpose and autonomy, treating them more like factory workers than empowered problem-solvers. It represents a lost opportunity to engage the entire team in the pursuit of value.

Embracing Full-Stack Product Ownership

The term "full-stack" is commonly used for developers who handle all aspects of a technology stack. Similarly, full-stack product ownership aims to eliminate responsibility silos and divisions.

While it might seem like a return to a "one voice" Product Owner, full-stack product ownership goes beyond that; it integrates all elements of product ownership to address current issues and enhance effectiveness. Let’s explore its true meaning!

Should We Return to “One Voice”?

Returning to a “one voice” approach for Product Ownership simplifies focus by centralizing decision-making. Historically, this meant one Product Owner synthesized diverse inputs into a single backlog, facilitating clear priorities and reducing context-switching.

While this model offers benefits such as improved clarity, aligned team focus, and rapid communication, it also has drawbacks. Centralizing all responsibilities can place excessive burdens on one individual, limit decision-making to a single perspective, and perpetuate some silos. While consolidating roles reduces complexity, it only partially addresses all issues.

Why “One Voice” won’t work

Handling today’s product complexities requires more than a single "one voice" approach. Full-stack product ownership amplifies this by involving the entire Scrum Team and the product community.

1. Collective Team Ownership: The Scrum Team should collectively own the product’s value, engaging all members in product decisions and responsibilities. This approach eliminates silos and enhances end-to-end accountability, leveraging diverse perspectives for better outcomes.
2. Community Co-Creation: Integrate the product community, stakeholders, end-users, and experts into the value-creation process. This prevents mistrust and reduces the need for strict controls, fostering continuous collaboration and enhancing value delivery.

Together, these practices ensure that value is pursued effectively and dynamically.

At Scale

Full-stack product ownership can be effective with a single Scrum Team and at scale. It’s essential to start with one team to refine the approach before expanding. This allows you to establish a flourishing pattern and understand its impact.

Once the approach works well with one team, scaling can involve grouping up to four Scrum Teams around a product area, each with a joint Product Owner. Working within their product area community, these teams continue to apply the full-stack principles.

This method simplifies scaling by avoiding hierarchical complications and excessive roles, focusing all efforts on delivering value efficiently.

Concentrating Value

Full-stack product ownership enhances the value of Scrum Teams by integrating all contributors in the pursuit of value. This approach reduces silos and aligns the team (or multiple teams) and the product community toward shared goals.

While full-stack ownership dilutes the Product Owner role by spreading it thin, it intensifies the focus on value. The Product Owner becomes a key facilitator, uniting everyone to concentrate on delivering value. With no silos, there’s no dilution.

In this model, the responsibility for value is distributed, which can be more effective than relying on a single individual.