According to the book Drive by Daniel Pink, knowledge workers are motivated mainly by a) purpose, b) autonomy and c) mastery.

When they cannot decide to keep a good level of quality in a product or they cannot decide how to make an effective use of their time and learn how to work professionally, they can get frustrated. Delivering good quality also improve the technical mastery of the team members. The usage index of features are a proxy for the value provided to an user so they increase the sense of purpose. The release frequency or company’s revenue are not tied to those motivation factors.

The product vision is a tool that explains why the product is worth developing it, what is the impact on the customers, the company and even the world. The product goal is an intermediate step towards the product vision. Both help to decide what items should be in the Product Backlog, how the Sprint goal is important and to inspect and adapt towards the product vision during the Sprint Review.

Although the product vision may be useful communicating the value of the product to other stakeholders such as executives and investors, they usually require more evidence to trust the initiatives.”

A product with low Unrealized Value (UV) in Evidence-Based Management (EBM) does not justify investment to grow the value and revenue of the product. However, if the Current Value is high, many current users are obtaining value and thus, the quality of the product should be maintained.

The pricing strategy should be driven by the value the product provides and the competition, not for the internal goals of the organization.

Any feedback about customer satisfaction or the outcomes they obtain by using the product could help to validate or suggest a change a change in the pricing strategy or tactics.

The lifecycle of the product can also be key to decide the price. P.e. a new product in the market could try to gain market share by having an attractive price, but also could be expensive if there is no competition. Another example: a mature product with fierce competition should typically be cheap.

“Low used features typically are due to:
– Not understanding the real outcome or need of the user.
– Releasing the features without early feedback from users.
– Not considering the diversity of user profiles within the user base.
– Believe that unused features are mainly due to lack of training.
– Not measuring feature usage and relying only on direct feedback.

The Product Owner should avoid those issues to maximise product usage.”

As the Scrum Guide 2020 says:

• “The moment a Product Backlog item meets the Definition of Done, an Increment is born.” and
  “The Definition of Done creates transparency by providing everyone a shared understanding of what work was completed as part of the Increment. If a Product Backlog item does not meet the Definition of Done, it cannot be released or even presented at the Sprint Review. Instead, it returns to the Product Backlog for future consideration.”.
• So that, all Increments need to adhere to the DoD and the Product Owner does not need to approve them.

Even if the Scrum Guide does not contain an explicit statement saying that the Increment could be release during the Sprint, it states “”The Sprint Review should never be considered a gate to releasing value.”” so it’s an implicit way of saying that releases are decoupled from the end of the Sprints.

“The Customer Satisfaction Gap is a measure from the Unrealized Value (UV) Key Value Area, defined in EBM as “”The difference between a customer or user’s desired experience and their current experience””.

Learn about the current satisfaction of the users by measuring the product usage, enabling them to actively provide feedback or talking to them about the expected outcomes and user experience could help to close that gap. Just reducing the price of a product that the users don’t feel valuable, or trying to educate the users for a product that is not helping them, won’t close that gap.”

“As the product grows, the role of the Product Owner gets closer to the strategy and needs to delegate part of the tactics to the Scrum Teams. When the Product Owner communicates effectively the product vision, the Scrum Teams are enabled to take more tactical decisions with autonomy. The teams are enabled alike by providing them the skills to effectively collaborate with the Product Owner defining and executing how to met the Sprint goals.

In contrast, isolating the Product Owner from the Scrum Teams by establishing proxies reduces their effectiveness. Breaking down the role in a team also undermines the decision making facet of the Product Owner.”

“The Sprint and its contained events provide a discrete opportunity for feedback and for improving the product and adjusting the process. They are the foundation of the Empirical Process Control that Scrum provides to the Scrum Team.

Other complementary tools such as Release and Sprint burndown can provide feedback, but not at cyclical pace. Conversations among Developers also provide feedback, but they are not intented to provide objective feedback to the whole team.”

The number of features of a product is not a good driver of its cost, it has only a clear co-relation only with the production cost. The princing strategy may be directed by the value perceived by the user or the outcomes it productes, positioning by price regarding the competition and commercial strategies as market penetration.

The Scrum Guide 2020 states:

The Product Owner is also accountable for effective Product Backlog management, which includes:

• Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal;
• Creating and clearly communicating Product Backlog items;
• Ordering Product Backlog items; and,
• Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood.

The Product Owner may do the above work or may delegate the responsibility to others. Regardless, the Product Owner remains accountable.

“Decision making and communication is one of the activities that demand more time from a Product Owner. When the product grows, the associated workload can become unsustainable unless a communication strategy and decision making tactics are established. Tools as the stakeholder matrix, delegation board and a list of decisions can help to establish a more efficient time usage for the Product Owner.

Delegating too much without control or to little, can produce some chaos or frustration.”

As explained by the Scrum Guide 2020:

The Sprint Backlog is composed of the Sprint Goal (why), the set of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint (what), as well as an actionable plan for delivering the Increment (how).

The Sprint Backlog is a plan by and for the Developers. It is a highly visible, real-time picture of the work that the Developers plan to accomplish during the Sprint in order to achieve the Sprint Goal. Consequently, the Sprint Backlog is updated throughout the Sprint as more is learned. It should have enough detail that they can inspect their progress in the Daily Scrum.

Although it is possible to extend the lifecycle of a product by adding more features or upgrade its technology, if the data shows low Unrealized Value (UV) it’s not likely that investing more on it is going to have a positive return. Discontinuing the product neither seems possible because the current customers find it valuable.

Saving part of the budget to invest in other initiatives, targeted for the current customers or others, could provide growth and replace the product revenue when its Current Value (CV) drops.”

The backlog ordering should be done by product value and not by other drivers, like stakeholder priority or to keep them happy. The ordering must be done by the Product Owner. The release should be small to be able to release value as soon as possible.