(2021-06-09) Cagan The CSPO Pathology

Martin Cagan: The CSPO Pathology. it is no secret that the majority of product teams and product organizations in the world (“the rest”) are not strong

I’ve written pretty extensively about the various forms of weak product teams and weak product managers

But while these articles may describe the problematic behaviors, they don’t really tackle the more fundamental question of why?

there are two very clear and distinct pathologies for these weak product managers and product leaders.

In this article I’ll discuss the first, and in the next article, I’ll tackle the second.

The fastest growing pathology I see, especially outside the US, is people confusing a product owner (the role on an Agile delivery team) with a product manager (one of the three critical competencies on a true product team).

there are well over 100,000 people that have become Certified Scrum Product Owners (CSPO).

the person that trained them how to be a product owner is almost never a proven strong product manager with experience from a strong product company.

These people are confusing the rituals of a delivery process, with the skills and responsibilities of a major job on a product team.

Some of these people that have never actually done the job, or even seen it done well, have gone on to write books and articles on product ownership and product leadership, run product conferences, and even start their own product schools and “product-management certification programs.”

there are exceptions. For example, I have long encouraged people to get their CSPO training from Jeff Patton because I know he knows the difference

Sending product managers to a CSPO course is fine, but it is not in any way a substitute for training as a product manager.

So how to train your product managers to be able to do their job?

Our first choice is always for the manager to coach and develop her product managers herself. But this assumes she has been an experienced and strong product manager herself

Unfortunately, the CSPO pathology continues to spread, and continues to spawn new variants, some of which are even more deadly to innovation (e.g. SAFe).