The Dev Team says it’s impossible. What should Product Owners do?
By: David Pereira
Tags: Agile, Leadership, Product Management, Software Development, Startup

Is it really impossible?

In my opinion, impossible is only a perception. Whenever we see something as impossible, I think we actually don’t know how to overcome that challenge. That’s why I don’t take the word “impossible” as the end of a conversation. Instead, I take as an opportunity for a meaningful collaboration.

The pillars of Scrum can help us to approach the impossible challenges. By inspecting and adapting, the Scrum team has the chance to sharpen their knowledge. Inspecting and adapting are powerful because they can reveal hidden opportunities.

Three pillars uphold every implementation of empirical process control: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. — Scrum Guide, November 2017

Whenever a Scrum team receives a significant challenge, which they don’t know how to overcome, they need to leave the comfort zone. The comfort zone is dangerous because though we have a feeling of control over it, we can never become a better version of ourselves. Therefore, we remain stuck. For many people, leaving this comfortable place is a big deal. Some people will avoid it at all costs. The unknown is scary but rewarding.

Some people are just soft. Maybe you’re one of these people. See, being soft simply means you’re addicted to being comfortable and you’re afraid of doing anything hard. You can be soft mentally, physically, spiritually, so it goes. The messaging of society is designed to keep you soft, weak, and complacent. See, here’s what the infamous “they” do to you. They take perfectly good, healthy, and reasonable concepts and bastardize them to the point they no longer become reasonable. — Ayodeji Awosika, How to Cure Your Addiction to Your Comfort Zone

My opinion is, if we live in the comfort zone, we miss the chance of developing ourselves! The bigger the challenge is, the more rewarding the outcome will be!

“The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.” — Arnold Palmer

Photo by Giulio Del Prete on Unsplash

Understanding why it seems impossible

Approaching the word impossible as a perception allows us to change it. As a Product Owner, I strive to understand why the team has this perception. By exploring, we can uncover the real blockers. Open and explorative questions are useful in this case, for example:

What brings you to this conclusion?

Which challenges do you see?

Why do you think it is impossible?

What can we do to make it possible?

What are the alternatives we can explore?

Questions force the team to think and understand the scenario better. Explorative questions are powerful because they open the mind for reflection. That’s why we need to be careful with statements like “This is impossible!” because it shuts the conversation down. A great Product Owner is a curious person; the more questions we ask, the more alternatives we can find.

“Nobody makes progress by standing still. The beauty is in the push, and it’s never easy.” — Zat Rana, Andrew Wiles: How to Do the Impossible

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

We should take challenges as opportunities. They should never block us. Instead, they should push us forward!

“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; The size of your dream; And how you handle disappointment along the way.” — Robert Kiyosaki

Moving from impossible to possible

Let me share with you a real experience. Once we had a challenge to solve a complex problem, we needed to answer the following question: how can we define the best routes for our field-force team? The details were:

20.000+ stores spread all over Brazil.

4.000+ field-employees.

Diverse transport options: public, automobile, boat, and bicycle.

I remember as if it was today, when I presented that to the team, the reaction was immediate. One team member said, “That’s just impossible to solve!”. So I thought, now it’s time for an in-depth conversation, that went like this:

Me: Hum. Interesting, why do you think this is impossible?

Team: Because we have no technology and knowledge to solve it.

Me: Which kind of knowledge and technology do we need?

Team: Well, we would need to evaluate how to calculate routes dynamically. Maybe if we could use an API like Google Maps, we may find an alternative. But we are talking of tons of work. We have no time for that. The amount of work is insane! It’s a monster!

Me: What if we had no time constraint, what would you do?

Team: Hum. Maybe we could start exploring Google API and playing around with some small set of data. Then, we could get some knowledge and build it step by step. But I have no idea if we would succeed.

Me: What holds you back from giving it a try?

Team: Time and permission to fail. If we had time to focus, we might have a way out. But if we fail, that should be taken as a learning. No blaming is allowed.

Long-story-short we delivered the whole Route Solution in three months. If I had accepted the impossible as the final statement, the company wouldn’t have a solution that replaced the work of twenty analysts. In the end, the team was incredibly proud and motivated by the achievement. We understood that impossible was only our perception due to our lack of knowledge.