Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about SAFe and the product owner role | Melissa Perri (author, founder of Product Institute)
Melissa Perry, author and CEO of Product Institute, discusses the product owner role, Scrum, and Scaled Agile (SAFE) in large, non-tech companies. She shares the history of these frameworks, what works and doesn't for digital transformations, and how leaders and product owners can level up their organizations and careers.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
The Rise of the Product Owner Role
Understanding Agile and Scrum Methodologies
Historical Context of the Product Owner Role
The Scrum Guide and Product Owner Responsibilities
Challenges of Adopting Scrum in Organizations
The Origins and Implementation of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)
Why SAFe is Often Not Recommended
Advice for Implementing a Digital Transformation
The Value of Experienced Product Leaders in Transformations
Career Paths and Transitioning from Product Owner to Product Manager
The Problem with Product Owner Certifications
Evaluating and Developing Product Owners into Product Managers
Embracing Agile Principles vs. Dogmatic Processes
5 Key Concepts
Agile Manifesto
A set of guidelines written in 2001 by software developers, focusing on how to build better products through software development, emphasizing moving quickly and delivering value to customers rather than rigid processes.
Scrum Guide
A codified framework for developing software, co-created by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, which outlines roles like developers, product owners, and Scrum Masters, and practices like two-week sprints and backlog management. Early versions did not extensively describe how to get items into the backlog or connect to broader product vision.
Product Owner Role (Scrum)
A role introduced by Scrum, initially intended to help developers prioritize work and maximize the value of work done. This role often involves defining backlog items and user stories, but historically lacked emphasis on market research, customer discovery, or strategic product management.
SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)
A framework designed to scale Scrum and other agile processes across large organizations, often appealing to executives due to its prescriptive operating model. It introduces concepts like 'release trains' and 'big room planning' but can lead to overly tactical product owner roles and a disconnect from strategic product management.
Product Management
A business role focused on the end-to-end process of understanding customers, conducting market research, testing hypotheses, iterating on products, and ensuring what is built delivers value and meets business goals. It encompasses strategy, organizational design, operations, and culture, extending beyond just development processes.
7 Questions Answered
The product owner role emerged from Scrum, a framework developed by software engineers, primarily to help developers prioritize their work and ensure they were building the most pressing or highest value items, rather than from traditional product management practices.
A product owner, as defined by early Scrum, is typically focused on tactical backlog management and working with development teams, whereas a product manager is responsible for end-to-end product strategy, customer research, market analysis, and ensuring the product delivers business value.
Many large companies, especially those not traditionally software-native, adopt Scrum and SAFe because they seek a structured, rigorous approach to scale software development and digital transformation, and these frameworks offer a seemingly 'plug-and-play' operating model.
SAFe can lead to product owners becoming mere 'order takers' focused on filling backlogs, a lack of time for customer discovery, rigid 'big room planning' commitments that hinder adaptation, and a disconnect between tactical execution and broader product strategy, often failing to address the core challenges of product management.
Product owners should focus on demonstrating value delivered, understanding customer problems, linking work to business goals and metrics, seeking opportunities for customer research, and advocating for clear career paths within their organization, rather than solely focusing on process-oriented tasks.
While some organizations (especially large enterprises adopting Scrum/SAFe) may require certifications like CSPO, top tech companies typically prioritize demonstrated experience in understanding customers, driving outcomes, and building great products over certifications, which often come from short, two-day classes.
Organizations should develop a comprehensive product operating model that includes clear product strategy, appropriate organizational design, robust product operations (e.g., data access, customer feedback mechanisms), and a culture that rewards value delivery over mere shipping, rather than just adopting development frameworks.
23 Actionable Insights
1. Avoid Scaled Agile Framework (SAFE)
Do not recommend using SAFE, as it’s often overkill, leads to process over outcomes, and companies frequently abandon or heavily modify it. It can cause organizations to get so caught up in process that they fail to deliver essential services or value.
2. Build Holistic Product Operating Model
When undergoing digital transformation, recognize that agile methodologies only provide a development operating model. You must also build a comprehensive product operating model that includes strategy, organizational design, product operations, and culture to ensure success.
3. C-Suite Must Drive Transformation
For successful digital transformation, the C-suite must unequivocally set the direction and commit to a whole new way of working. Transformations run by middle managers often fail due to resistance from those whose jobs may be in jeopardy.
4. Elevate Software Strategy to C-Suite
Ensure software and digital strategy are integrated into C-suite-level discussions and overall company strategy. Delegating it solely to IT will hinder innovation and competitive advantage, causing the company to fall behind.
5. Hire Experienced Product Leaders
To successfully navigate digital transformation, bring in experienced product leaders who have previously run large-scale technology organizations and understand effective product development. This provides crucial guidance and expertise that frameworks alone cannot offer.
6. Mix Internal & External Talent
Foster successful transformations by combining existing internal talent with experienced external hires, creating an environment where internal staff can learn from seasoned product professionals. This mix helps level up skills and ensures continuity.
7. Enable Product Managers
Leaders must understand the product management role and actively remove bureaucracy and provide infrastructure, such as data access and customer interaction channels, to enable product managers and development teams to succeed. This empowers teams to do good product work.
8. Reward Value, Not Output
Shift organizational incentives to reward delivering value and achieving business goals, rather than simply shipping as many features or filling backlogs. This ensures teams focus on meaningful outcomes that benefit the business and customers.
9. Develop Clear Product Strategy
Establish a clear product strategy that explicitly ties all work back to company goals and desired business value. This provides transparency and ensures that product efforts contribute directly to organizational objectives.
10. Ensure Transparency & Efficiency
Implement necessary processes and tools, such as roadmapping tools, to gain transparency into what thousands of teams are doing and ensure organizational efficiency in product delivery. This helps coordinate efforts and track progress against goals.
11. Standardize PM Career Paths
Establish a clear, unified career path for product managers (e.g., Associate PM, PM, Senior PM) and avoid confusing separate ‘Product Owner’ and ‘Product Manager’ titles. This provides clarity, growth opportunities, and retains talent.
12. Product Owners: Seek Strategic Ownership
If you’re a Product Owner lacking strategic involvement, proactively seek opportunities to engage in customer research and challenge given tasks. This helps you develop broader product management skills and influence product direction.
13. Inquire About Career Path
Product Owners should proactively ask leaders about their career path to prompt organizational thinking and development of clear progression opportunities. This helps leaders recognize the need for defined growth trajectories.
14. Focus on Release Outcomes
Before releasing features, ask ‘What do we hope will happen when we release this?’ and ‘What metrics are we going to change?’. This ensures alignment on desired outcomes and enables measurement of success, shifting focus from output to impact.
15. Value-Oriented Resume for PMs
When applying for product management roles, focus your resume on the value delivered to users and the business metrics you influenced, rather than detailing agile processes or scrum cadences. This highlights your impact and strategic thinking.
16. Dual Title for Product Owners
If you have a Product Owner title but perform Product Manager duties, consider using ‘Product Owner / Product Manager’ on your resume. This clarifies your capabilities and helps overcome potential negative connotations associated with the PO title.
17. Skepticism Towards Agile Certs
Be skeptical of agile certifications (like CSPO) for transitioning into product management at top tech companies, as they often prioritize experience and demonstrated value over short-course certifications. Focus on gaining practical experience instead.
18. Adapt Scrum, Cut Meetings
Don’t follow Scrum dogmatically; regularly inspect and adapt your processes, eliminating unnecessary meetings or practices that don’t serve your team’s efficiency or product goals. The ‘inspect and adapt’ principle means you should question if current practices are working.
19. Skip Frameworks if Effective
If your team already communicates effectively, breaks down work, and understands tasks, you don’t need rigid frameworks like Scrum. These frameworks can add unnecessary overhead when organic collaboration is already strong.
20. Scrum Alone Insufficient
Don’t rely solely on Scrum for product excellence; it’s only one piece of building great products and needs to be complemented with broader product management practices. Scrum is a development operating model, not a complete product strategy.
21. Evaluate Existing Roles & Skills
During transformation, critically evaluate if existing roles and personnel, such as project managers or business people, are suitable for new product-centric ways of working. Assess their ability to learn and adapt to software development to ensure the right talent is in place.
22. Consider New Opportunities
If your current organization prevents you from practicing effective product management, consider seeking opportunities in other companies or moving internally to a more product-mature division. This can be crucial for career growth and job satisfaction.
23. Hire Chief Product Officers
Organizations should hire Chief Product Officers to the C-suite to champion how software can drive significant business advantage, innovation, and competitive differentiation. This ensures product strategy is integrated at the highest level.
7 Key Quotes
Every single person I have talked to who likes SAFE, found success with SAFE, they ended up ripping it up and making it into something else.
Melissa Perri
This product owner role did not emerge from product management as we know it today. It was a way to help the developers prioritize what to work on.
Melissa Perri
If you embrace those principles, you're going to do well. But if you think of agile as just like a defined, super cut and dry process where you have to follow every single little step here and there, like that's not going to serve you.
Melissa Perri
I don't think processes are the enemy here. So for example, if I hear somebody really worried about getting a roadmapping tool in there or something like that, I'm like, yes, you need that because you have no idea what your 4,000 teams are doing.
Melissa Perri
Take scrum away. You still need product management, right? Like product owner doesn't exist without scrum. That's not a thing, but you still need product managers.
Melissa Perri
If you are in an organization and you cannot see what good looks like anywhere, that's a red flag.
Melissa Perri
There's no, there's no quick way to doing any of this, right? There's no fast track. We don't get to skip over all the hard things.
Melissa Perri