Recently, there was a discussion on LinkedIn, if a CEO of an organization can be the Product Owner as well, for the company.
A couple of them quoted Steve Jobs as being both the CEO and PO and quite successful at that.
In my coaching experience, I have seen PO and CEO being the same in start-ups and then over a period of time, when it becomes busy and viable to afford a PO, the CEOs usually move away from the PO role and focus on business and revenue.
I just wanted to quote a real time example here on the same topic.
I was watching the finals of a reality show on investment funding on one of the business channels recently. This is a reality show where we have three top investors from the country go through nearly 30+ entrepreneurs who are looking for investments to take their start ups to next level.
Every episode, you have about 5 people who are given 1 minute to give their elevator pitch of their business. The investors then ask questions based on this pitch and try to get as much information as possible to see 1) how ready are they from a funding perspective 2) How viable is their plan for investment
One of the guys – CEO of the company, was representing his company pitch to the investors. This was a boutique e-commerce company (more a style store and not generic e-comm place). The CEO was there to present the pitch and it was clear from the discussions that the CEO as also the PO and had a great deal of knowledge on the product but was a bit short on the business piece. Nothing wrong, he will learn his way through the journey. And, yes this guy finally won the game and got a funding of 0.5ml $.
Yes, this model will not work for long and will surely fail soon if they don’t get a full time PO sooner than later. And why:
- CEO will get so busy with new investment coming in that he will have no time to collaborate with the teams as much he/she should do
- CEO will now be more focused on the business value of the features and other important features like architecture and design will take a back seat
- CEO will not be available for key activities like sprint planning, demos and daily stand ups due to time constraints.
- CEO will no more have the time to break features into user stories for teams to understand, estimate and execute
Yes, few more can be added. But in short, a CEO as a PO is not a bad idea to start with but surely will not be a long term idea if the organization is keen to succeed in the business front.
