Empowering the Product Owner
For a change, here is a question about how to make Scrum work in a non-ideal environment.
I think in many companies transitioning to Scrum, we might find ourselves in a situation where Management has difficulties with giving the PO the powers he should have. Specifically, some managers have difficulties empowering the PO to make "ship or no-ship" decisions. They're used to a situation where they make that call and might not want to relinquish it so easily.
What are the arguments for a fully and properly empowered PO?
So far I thought of one:
The PO has more knowledge about the actual state of the product than a manager. Thus he has more information available with which to make the decision to ship.
Can you think of any more?
Is the senior manager (or whoever has the actual authority) prepared to have a review process in place for X number of potential releases, knowing that the review process is likely to lengthen time to market?
I guess the answer to that question is part of the argument.
One situation is when PO's are not empowered to make go/no-go decisions for their product. Another situation is when the PO is not empowered to make decisions around what is being worked on, and is simply a figurehead/order-taker for those who still want to make those decisions.
As with most things Agile, it is a case of trust (or mistrust) and a case of control (not wanting to relinquish it).
It will be harder to close the validated learning loop effectively, and to inspect and adapt the product in a timely manner, if third parties are allowed to interfere by commandeering release authority. Imagine a lean startup situation with multiple releases per sprint where each one is an MVP designed to rapidly test an hypothesis.