I am a big believer in agile development. I just changed jobs, and I am now working for a company that coordinates big development projects for (rather large) groups of customer organizations. My job is to find the right contractors for the projects, and make sure that the customer organizations are as happy as possible, and control the process. There is nothing in the world that would make me happier, than if I could introduce Scrum or a similar agile method into this situation, making my company's main role the product owner. It would make sense on so many levels.
There are some issues though: Since Scrum is a rapid-response method, I wonder if Scrum is the right method for a place like this, where not one customer but a big group of customers have to be involved in prioritizing of the backlog from sprint to sprint. It takes place in a quite political environment. What pitfalls and possibilities do you see in a situation like this? Can this situation simply be handled by longer sprints?
There is a general understanding and empathy for the agile agenda in the company, but the issue I describe here seems to be a major obstacle.
I would really appreciate your input. I need good ammo for my agile preaching :o)
Best Answer
You present an interesting problem primarily because I have never heard of a company operating in such a way. Many companies have multiple clients, and many also have a single product that they sell to multiple clients with differing needs.
The fact that your organization simply allows clients to brawl it out in a gladiator pit over which features make it into the backlog sounds like a chaotic mess. Your company NEEDS a product owner who deals with the clients individually and determines what features and changes need to occur in the product to make the majority of clients happy the majority of the time.
The very thought of multiple product owners is inherently Anti-Scrum.