Mario Moreira - Available for your Agile and Business Conference & Seminar

Mario Moreira is available to speak at your Agile or business conference/seminar.  He has been a keynote speaker and has led numerous sessions over the years (conference, seminar, and webinars). If you are looking for someone to energize the crowd, get them engaged, and have them talking about the session afterward, then Mario is the speaker for you.  

Email: Mario can be reached at mario_e_moreira@yahoo.com. 
Twitter: Consider following Mario at @AgileMario 

Note: Mario recent book is entitled "The Agile Enterprise".  Learn more at: http://amzn.to/2p50XfB.  A Japanese version of this book is also available. 

----------------------------------------------
Mario's past Speaking Engagements:

- 2021 ISPE Annual Meeting and Expo - Discovery Mindset: Benefit Patients Through Fast Time to Market - https://ispe.org/conferences/2021-annual-meeting-expo - Nov 2021 - Boston, MA  

- XP2021 - Time to Play Shark Tank, https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6808840420714450944/ - June 2021 - UK/Virtual/Worldwide

- World Agility Forum - Fake Agile vs Real Agile - panel with Chet Hendrickson, Nigel Thurlow, Steve Denning, and Mario Moreira - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/experience-agile-2019-lisbon-part-i-natalie-caraman/ - Oct 2019 - Lisbon, Portugal

- eXperienceAgile (XP) 2019 - Building a Continuous Customer Value Driven Company - Oct 2019 - Lisbon, Portugal

- eXperience Agile (XP) 2019 - The Agile Futurist - https://ordina-jworks.github.io/conference/2019/11/12/experience-agile-2019.html - Oct 2019 - Lisbon, Portugal

- Agile Games 2018 - Experience the Journey toward Psychological Safety - http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/2018/03/agile-games-2018-cutting-edge-of.html, April 9, 2018 - Boston, MA 

- Boston SPIN - Requirements Tree: Connecting your Strategy to your User Stories for greater Value to your Customers - http://boston-spin.org/index.php/2018/04/18/may-2018-requirements-tree-connecting-your-strategy-to-user-stories-mario-moreira/ May 15, 2018 - Burlington, MA

- Agile Dev East -A Customer Value-Driven Model for the Agile Enterprise - Nov 8, 2017 - Orlando, MA

- Massachusetts Commonwealth PM Connect - Agile in the Wild: The Many ways to Apply Agile (not just Scrum and Kanban) - Sept 21, 2017 - Boston, MA

- Agile New England - Building and Running a True Customer Value-Driven Enterprise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPwxNn9fOj0&t=100s - May 4, 2017 - Boston, MA

- Barcelona Scrum Meeting (February 2017) - "Where HR and Agile Meet" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgKFaWGX8lM#t=06m47s - Barcelona, Spain

- Keynote for the Agile Conference Tunis - The Foundation and Future of Agile - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6MCx1xawk4&t=20s, Oct 11, 2017 - Tunis, Tunisia 

- MassBay PMI - Establishing an Agile Portfolio Management Pipeline to Deliver Higher Value to your Customers - https://www.pmimassbay.org/88-member-services/professional-dev-day/191565-pdday-south-2017#mario-moreira Sept 22, 2017 - Norwood, MA 

- Agile Games 2017 - "Energize your Workshops with 3 Constellation Icebreaker Games"

"http://agilegamesnewengland.org/index.php/agile-games-conference/agile-games-fast-games/162-energize-your-workshops-with-3-constellation-icebreaker-games" - Cambridge, MA, USA

- Agile Development Conference (November 2015) - "Actionable Customer Feedback: A Key to Product Success" -  "https://www.techwell.com/techwell-insights/2015/10/importance-customer-feedback-building-right-product" - Orlando, FL, USA  

- ScrumDay Portugal (October 2015) - Keynote speaking on "How can Portugal be a Technology and Business Leader on IT thru Agile Practices?" - "http://scrumdayportugal.com/mario-moreira/" - Lisbon, Portugal 

- Agile2015 (August 2015) - "Customer Vision for better Feedback and more Product Success!" - "https://agile2015.sched.org/speaker/mario_e_moreira" - Washington, DC USA

- Agile New England (July 2015) - "Customer Feedback Vision - Persona to Requirements to Demonstration to Product Success!" - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU1E6-lQaLU" - Boston, MA USA

- MassBay PMI Professional Development Day (June 2015) - "Vistaprint's Agile Transformation and the Education that helped with their Journey" - "http://www.myeventguru.com/events/PDDAY2015/" - Boston, MA USA

- Software Quality Group New England/SQGNE (May 2015) - "Agile - Bringing Testing to the Forefront" - http://sqgne.org/presentations/2014-15/Moreira-May-2015.pdf - Boston, MA, USA

- Agile New England (November 2013) - "The Importance of Agile Readiness - Success Factors for a Transformation to Agile" - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9AHTA9v_JM"- Boston, MA USA

- Agile Development Practices East (November 2013) – “Getting Ready for your Agile Journey” - http://bsceast.techwell.com/sessions/agile-development-conference-east-2013/getting-ready-your-agile-adventure - Boston, MA, USA

- Boston SPIN (January 2013) – “Writing Effective User Stories for Agile or Waterfall” – http://www.boston-spin.org/meeting_archive/boston_spin_topic_2013_01.html - Boston, MA, USA

-  Give Thanks for Scrum (November 2012) with Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland – “Getting the Most from the Sprint Review” - http://newtechusa.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/GettingTheMostFromTheSprintReviewGTFS.pdf - Boston, MA, USA

- Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (October 2012) – “Go Lean, Go Agile: Are we there Yet?” – Panelist - http://anitaborg.org/wiki/images/b/b0/F1000-Theme4_Yunling_Wang.pdf  - Baltimore, MD, USA

- Agile Development Practices East (November 2011) – “Minding the Gap: Project Governance vs. Agile Flexibility” - http://www.sqe.com/ConferenceArchive/agiledevpracticeseast2011/ConcurrentThursday.html  - Orlando, FL, USA

- Nashua Scrum Club (March 2011 ) - "Starting your Project off right with Agile Release Planning" - http://archive.feedblitz.com/675280/~3988328 – Nashua, NH, USA

- Boston SPIN (Sept 2010) - "Agile - The Basic Roles and Beyond" - http://boston-spin.org/meeting_archive/boston_spin_topic_2010_09.html – Boston, MA, USA

- AccuRev & Book Launch (April 2010) – “Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams: Building Sustainability and Speed” - http://accurev.com/blog/tag/agile-teams/page/2/  – Boston, MA, USA

- Agile New England (April 2010) -  "Building the Right Product and Building the Product Right" - http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/message/153460 – Boston, MA, USA

- Enterprise Software Development Conference (ESDC) (March 2010) – “Adapting to Continuous Integration and Build: Considerations for Deployment” http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34043  - San Mateo, CA, USA

- OPEN New England (March 2010) -  "Agile for Executives and Leaders" - http://open-newengland.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64%3Aagile-executive&Itemid=32 – Boston, MA, USA

- ALM Expo (Oct 2009) - Keynote speaker - "Agile and ALM" - http://www.agilejournal.com/blogs/community-member-blogs/keynote-speaker-for-alm-expo-2009.html/blogger/ckarpovich/  - Worldwide Webinar 

- Boston SPIN (May 2009) - "Modern Approaches to Infrastructure: On Premises or In the Clouds" - http://boston-spin.org/meeting_archive/boston_spin_topic_2009_05.html – Boston, MA, USA

- AccuRev Software Configuration Management Seminar (May 2004) “Systematic Process for Selecting a Valuable Configuration Management Product” - http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20040520005471/en/AccuRev-Host-Software-Configuration-Management-Seminar – Boston, MA, USA

- Swedish Configuration Management Summit (November 2001) – “Crawl, Walk, Run! - Challenges in Implementing Configuration Management in a Complex Environment” – Stockholm, Sweden

- System Configuration Management : 9th International Symposium (SCM-9)  (September 1999) – “The 3 Software Configuration Management Implementations Levels” Tutorial - http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F3-540-48253-9_18 - Toulouse, France

---------------------------
Articles where Mario has been quoted or written about:

Book Review on The Agile Enterprise: Building and Running Agile Organizations for InfoQ by Ben Linders - https://www.infoq.com/articles/book-review-agile-enterprise - Jun 2017

Qualities of the Agile Enterprise and Why They Matter -Interview with Mario Moreira by Ryn Melberg via the Guardian Podcast - http://rynmelberg.com/2017/05/qualities-agile-enterprise-matter/ - May 2017

Agile Animal Farm by Pierre E. Neis - https://www.slideshare.net/PierreNeis/agile-animal-farm-london-2015 - See slide 5 - Dec 2015

Portuguese companies must combat risk aversion to regain the Vision of Discoveries by SapoTek-
http://tek.sapo.pt/noticias/computadores/artigo/empresas_portuguesas_tem_de_combater_aversao_ao_risco_e_reencontrar_visao_dos_de-44423qlz.html (translation in English at: http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-can-portugal-be-technology-and_18.html) - Oct 2015

Book Review on Being Agile: Your Roadmap to Successful Agile Adoption for InfoQ by Ben Linders - https://www.infoq.com/articles/being-agile-mario-moreira - Oct 2014

Documentation in Agile: How much and when to write it for InfoQ by Ben Linders - https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/01/documentation-agile-how-much/ - Jan 2014

Applying CM to Agile Teams: A Look Back by Joe Townsend - https://www.techwell.com/techwell-insights/2012/08/applying-cm-agile-teams-look-back - Aug 2012

Winning with Agile and the Cloud in CA Technology Exchange - http://www.ca.com/au/~/media/Files/About%20Us/ca-technology-exchange-saas-november-2011.pdf - Nov 2011

Solving the Puzzle: Configuration Management in Agile Development: by David Ramel - https://adtmag.com/articles/2010/04/05/configuration-management-and-agile-development.aspx - April 2010

Review:  Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams: by Rich Mironov - http://www.mironov.com/cm4agile/ - Jan 2010

---------------------------
Mario in the News:

Review: The Agile Enterprise -
https://hennyportman.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/review-the-agile-enterprise/ - May 2018

Winchester's Moreira writes on business principles - http://winchester.wickedlocal.com/news/20170703/winchesters-moreira-writes-on-business-principles - July 2017

Q&A on the Book Agile Enterprise - https://www.infoq.com/articles/book-review-agile-enterprise - May 2017

Who makes the Best Product Owner?

In one of my recent articles entitled Who makes the best ScrumMaster?, I discussed the attributes needed to make an effective ScrumMaster and what traditional roles may play the ScrumMaster best. From the feedback, those who can best exemplify the attributes of a ScrumMaster made the best ScrumMaster and it did not appear to be strongly aligned with any particular traditional role.

In this article, the focus is the Product Owner role. Much like the ScrumMaster, the Product Owner role is very important to a successfully running Agile team. In fact as teams consider adopting Agile, who plays the Product Owner is critical to gaining the benefits of Agile due to the importance of identifying customer value and enacting the customer validation activities to ensure we are building something that the customer actually wants.

What are some important attributes of an effective Product Owner? A Product Owner recognizes what customers want and translates their needs into meaningful epics and user stories (aka, requirements). A Product Owner must intuitively adapt requirements (aka, user stories) when customer needs and market conditions change, to ensure what is built and delivered aligns with customer needs. This may sound obvious but the Product Owner must have the wherewithal to ensure that the organization in which the team works in will positively support and welcome change. A Product Owner must have the attributes to be a good voice-of-the-customer (VoC) and communicate the customer needs to the Team so they can build what the customer needs. It can be quite challenging to commit time to customers and team members.  Some attributes that an effective Product Owner must have include:

• Parsing customer and business problems and turn them into meaningful user stories  
• Working with sales and marketing to get their ideas into the backlog
• Establishing a directional Product Roadmap and Product Strategy
• Understanding the business marketplace
• Understanding and interacting with the customer domain 
• Establishing effective Customer validation (e.g., end-of-sprint reviews/demos, alphas, etc.) to ensure you are building a product the customer wants   
• Understanding that it takes a trusting environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or judgement, with an emphasis of healing, collaboration, and problem solving  
• Facilitating and influencing the work without coercion, assigning, or dictating

So the question arises, is there a traditional role that plays the Product Owner the best? Let’s examine a few of these roles.

Business Analyst as Product Owner?

What does a traditional Business Analyst (BA) do? A BA is someone who analyzes business needs, works with stakeholders in order to understand their needs, and to recommend solutions that meets these needs. At a deeper level, a BA focuses on eliciting, documenting, and managing requirements. They also act as a liaison between business and technical groups. It is because of the work a Business Analyst already does and in particular their focus on requirements and their liaison role between the business and technical groups that makes them a good candidate for the Product Owner role. A traditional BA would have to gain the experience in working in an Agile manner including the continuous requirements elicitation process (per the sprint cadence) and applying iterative customer validation so skills and experience in these areas would have to be built.

Product Manager as Product Owner?

What does a traditional Product Manager (PM) do? A PM examines the market, the competition, and customer needs and establishes the product direction that is considered valuable to the market and the customers therein. A good PM focuses on the financial considerations including the return on investment (ROI). In addition, the PM is involved in the requirements gathering and management process. It is because of the work a Product Manager already does particularly their focus on what is considered valuable by the customer that makes them a good candidate for the Product Owner role. A traditional PM may not have the experience in working in an Agile manner including a continuous requirements gathering process (per the sprint cadence) and applying iterative customer validation so skills and experience in these areas would have to be built.

Project Manager as Product Owner?

What does a traditional Project Manager (PjM) do? The primary responsibility of a Project Manager is to plan and execute a project from the beginning to closure. A PjM focuses on the project costs, schedule, and scope. A PjM may also help build the project objectives, help manage the requirements management process, manage project risks, issues, and dependencies. While there are some attributes a PjM brings that can help in the Product Owner role, there is very little direct customer focus which is a big part of the Product Owner role so this experience would have to be gained. A PjM may have to unlearn some "assigning work" and "driving the work" as this can inhibit the team's ability to become self-organizing.

Technical Manager as Product Owner?

I have found that some Technical Managers (TM) provide aspects of product ownership to their work. The Technical Manager may get input from Product Managers, Sales, and Marketing and then crafts them into meaningful customer needs.  While there are some attributes a TM brings that can help in the Product Owner role such as crafting a product or service direction, there may be little direct customer focus which is a big part of the Product Owner role. This experience would have to be gained. In addition, a TM will need to break from the "team are my direct reports" mindset and "assigning the work" as this can inhibit the ability for the team to become self-organizing.

Other Roles as Product Owner?
There are other roles that may be considered.  A select example are those in the marketing space (e.g., Market Researcher), service space (e.g., Service Consultant), user or customer experience space (e.g., UX Designer), and entrepreneurs. These are roles that understand the market, customers, and the continuous feedback from the customer.  As organizations have various roles in this capacity, it is worth investigating those current roles that are customer facing and understand how to translate feedback and strategy into user stories. 

Summary

IMHO, those who have played either a Business Analyst or Product Manager can become an effective Product Owner. However, anyone who has played a role where they work with customers to collect their needs and then work with teams to build products or solutions that meet those needs can evolve into an effective Product Owner. I would suggest that anyone who becomes a Product Owner (or is interested in doing so) should consider taking Agile Product Owner education, reading related books, and/or gaining guidance in this area through an Agile Coach in order to help them better understand this role and the activities they will need to perform in order to play this role effectively.