The Subject Matter Expert (A Misunderstood Product Owner Stance) | by Robbin Schuurman | The Value Maximizers | Medium 28-10-20

20 16:06

The Subject Matter Expert

(A Misunderstood Product
Owner Stance)
Robbin Schuurman Follow
Nov 20, 2019 · 7 min read

What is a Subject
Matter Expert?
The Subject Matter Expert or
SME is the expert in telling
you how stu1 works. Product
Owners that favor this stance
are a blessing and a curse.
When you bring relevant
domain knowledge to the
The Subject Matter Expert Product Owner
Scrum Team, they can make
more informed decisions and
create a better plan to achieve (Sprint) Goals. It can also lead to a
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The Subject Matter Expert (A Misunderstood Product Owner Stance) | by Robbin Schuurman | The Value Maximizers | Medium 28-10-20 16:06

single point of knowledge, and rather than taking the stance of

the Story Writer and forgoing discussion, this stance manifests
itself as micro-management and spoon feeding the development
team. In many organizations, it seems to be expected that the
Product Owner is also the Subject Matter Expert. The person with
the most knowledge about the business processes and the nitty
gritty details. Although there’s nothing wrong with
understanding the business processes really well as a Product
Owner, you don’t have to be the expert!

A subject-matter expert (SME) or domain expert is a person who

is an authority in a particular area or topic. The term domain
expert is frequently used in expert systems software development,
and there the term always refers to the domain other than the
software domain. A domain expert is a person with special
knowledge or skills in a particular area of endeavour (e.g. an
accountant is an expert in the domain of accountancy). The
development of accounting software requires knowledge in two
di?erent domains: accounting and software. Some of the
development workers may be experts in one domain and not the
other.
— Wikipedia, Oktober 2019 —

The Subject Matter Expert is also referred to as the senior user,

key user, proces manager, domain expert or business expert.

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The Subject Matter Expert (A Misunderstood Product Owner Stance) | by Robbin Schuurman | The Value Maximizers | Medium 28-10-20 16:06

The Product Owner as a SME

With the many Product Owners and Product Managers we have
trained and coached in their daily practice, we’ve observed the
following patterns in Product Owners that we would classify as
SMEs:

The SME has the abilities to specify work up to a great level of

detail. Since SMEs are, like the term says, typically experts in
their business, domain or technical Neld, they know all about
all the tiny little details. And most of them aren’t afraid to
make sure that everybody knows. And so one of the traps of
having SME Product Owners, is that they can talk about all the
details for hours. It’s not uncommon that meetings take way
longer than expected and that all the tiny details were
discussed, but nobody really understands the goals that we’re
working towards.

The SME quite frequently speaks phrases like: “You don’t need
to know that.” or “I’ll let you know about the next steps when
we get there.” It feels like the information they have is
valuable, yet it is kept under close guard. Sometimes by
design, sometimes by unawareness. Knowledge is power, and
in diTcult times being the expert with a lot of knowledge can
be perceived as job security. The SME therefore isn’t
necessarily in favor of knowledge sharing, they instead love
spoon feeding the Development Team with tiny pieces of the

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The Subject Matter Expert (A Misunderstood Product Owner Stance) | by Robbin Schuurman | The Value Maximizers | Medium 28-10-20 16:06

total picture, so that they are constantly being involved

throughout the development e1ort.

Another risky behavior that SMEs frequently display, is to both

be Product Owner and Development Team member. For
example; being both Product Owner and Software/Enterprise
Architect or being both Product Owner and Business
Developer or maybe being both Customer Journey Expert and
Product Owner. There is obviously a risk in having multiple
jobs and roles in the team, however, being the senior or expert
on the team often reveals the pitfall of stepping in and doing it
yourself. It wouldn’t be the Nrst time that the senior Developer
or Architect would rearrange the codebase overnight or during
the weekend. Neither would it be a Nrst timer for a “Marketing
Product Owner” to redesign the whole marketing campaign
The plans
Value overnight…
Maximizers
Other
In 2019, associated behaviors with the Subject Matter Expert
Robbin
Schuurman and
type of Product Owner are: being the architect, being the
Chris Lukassen have
technical (development) expert, being the test manager, being
joined…

the senior (technical) person on the team who decides on all

Follow
the details, being the (UX) designer, being a micromanager,
distributing tasks amongst team-members, reducing e1ort
estimates
1 by the Development Team.

The results/effects of acting like a SME

Obviously, not all (Product Owner) SMEs are the same, and not
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The Subject Matter Expert (A Misunderstood Product Owner Stance) | by Robbin Schuurman | The Value Maximizers | Medium 28-10-20 16:06

all the results/e1ects may be visible in your context. That being

said though, what we typically observe when Product Owners act
like SMEs is:

Focus on details, e1ects and short term results;

Little to none focus on long term outcomes (TCO, ROI, P&L,

etc);

Slowing the Scrum Team down;

The Scrum Team isn’t learning and obtaining more business,

domain, customer and product knowledge, because they can
always ask the Subject Matter Expert anyway... This prevents
them from making better, faster and more informed decisions
and herewith increase self-organization;

Too much focus on the details, typically not limited to ‘what’

and ‘why’, but also including acceptance criteria, maybe
designs/sketches, functional and or technical documentation,
etc. This is too much detail for a Product Owner to write down;

Typically SMEs have no vision and strategy in place, and/or

aren’t actively sharing the vision and strategy with the Scrum
Team and its stakeholders;

The Development Team isn’t learning to be self-organizing

their own work, they won’t be taking ownership (over
planning, results, quality, etc), because they’re being spoon fed
by the SME;

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The Subject Matter Expert (A Misunderstood Product Owner Stance) | by Robbin Schuurman | The Value Maximizers | Medium 28-10-20 16:06

What you can do to move away from this

stance
Many people love to be an expert in something. From various
di1erent researches, such as done by Dan Pink, they learned that
Mastery is actually a big motivator for people: People like to
become very good at something. So, that leaves us with the
challenging question: What can you do to move away from the
misunderstood Subject Matter Expert stance? Well, there are a
couple of options, but none of them will be a quick Nx though…

…The Nrst thing you should do as an expert, is to evaluate

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The Subject Matter Expert (A Misunderstood Product Owner Stance) | by Robbin Schuurman | The Value Maximizers | Medium 28-10-20 16:06

how much this expert status means to you. Some people love
to be the expert, and there is nothing wrong with that! It o1ers
a feeling of pride, achievement and status. These are all
relevant experiences and feelings for people to have, so, before
you do anything; decide if you want to be seen the expert or
not…

…If you want to be the expert, if you want to know all about
all the details, then maybe it’s better for you to join a
Development Team? Development Teams need to be self-
organizing and with an expert like yourself in the team, they
can deNnitely make some huge steps in becoming more self-
organizing as a team!

…Or if you don’t want to be the expert (anymore), or you

don’t care about this status anymore, then you probably
already know what to do right? Start sharing your knowledge,
make sure the Development Team gets full access to your
domain expertise brain and make them more self-organizing.
Also, don’t interfere with the details anymore. If you want
them to learn, allow them to make mistakes (safe and slightly
controlled, don’t let them blow up the business of course). And
maybe you should create some documentation, sketches,
processes pictures, etc. Make sure that you transfer and share
your knowledge with the team(s), but also to connect them
with the ‘new’ expert (your successor expert), so that they can
have a direct collaboration with the right people and all
continue their learning and development journeys.
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The Subject Matter Expert (A Misunderstood Product Owner Stance) | by Robbin Schuurman | The Value Maximizers | Medium 28-10-20 16:06

Want to learn more?

This is a blog from the Stances of the Product Owner series, in
which Professional Scrum Product Owner Trainers and
Consultants Chris Lukassen and Robbin Schuurman explore
preferred and misunderstood stances (attitudes) of Product
Owners and (Agile) Product Managers. Read more about the
Stances of the Product Owner on this page.

Go experience the Stances of the Product

Owner!
If you’re a Product Owner, Product Manager, Scrum Master or
Agile Coach with about a year (or more) of experience under your
belt, go and explore the Stances of the Product Owner in the
Professional Scrum Product Owner-Advanced class. Find a trainer
to your liking or in your area, and deepen and expand your
Product Management knowledge and skills. And let us know what
you think about the training! What did you like? What can be
improved? Let’s collaborate to take the profession of Product
Ownership to the next level.

If you’d like to experience the all-new Professional Scrum Product

Owner-Advanced class, go to Scrum.org to Nnd a class in your
area. If you’d like to participate in one of our classes, check out
our Xebia Academy page for more information or inquire for an
in-house class via training@xebia.com.
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Want to join our Scrum.org Product Owner-Advanced Training? Click the banner to find a
course.

Agile Scrum Product Management Product Owner Product Owner Stances

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