Controlled Flight Into Terrain

Thanks to Adam for twittering a link to:

The product owner and the product-shaped hole – Why what the product owner needs to worry about isn’t in the product backlog

Everybody needs to read this – business folks for guidance as to what those crazy agile developers are asking you do do, and developers for what you need to help your business folks do.

I particularly like the quote

I happily served my time on this XP project as a developer. Although I felt the product concept and release strategy was flawed, it wasn’t my problem, the hole was in their side of the boat.

I think that’s one of the biggest problems with the silo-structured organization – all your incentives are to make sure the hole isn’t in your side of the boat, rather than keep the whole thing afloat.