#124: How to Avoid Common Product Team Pitfalls with David Pereira

Curious if your product team is caught in common traps that limit success? Join Brian and David Pereira as they explore how to simplify workflows, make smarter bets with prioritization, and shift from output-driven thinking to delivering real value.

Overview

In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, host Brian Milner chats with David Pereira, author of Untrapping Product Teams. Together, they dive into the common traps product teams face, the differences between project and product management, and practical strategies for prioritization.

David shares insights from his book, offering advice on building healthier backlogs, creating adaptable roadmaps, and moving beyond a feature-obsessed mindset to focus on delivering true value.

References and resources mentioned in the show:

David Pereira
Untrapping Product Teams by David Pereira
Certified Scrum Product Owner® Training
Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner®
Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule
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This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

David Pereira is a seasoned Product Leader with over 15 years of experience guiding Agile teams to deliver real value faster. As CEO of omoqo GmbH and a top writer on product management, David is passionate about helping teams overcome challenges, unlock their potential, and simplify their workflows to drive meaningful outcomes.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Brian (00:00)
Welcome back Agile Mentors. We are here for yet another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today I have Mr. David Pereira with us. Welcome in, David.

David Pereira (00:12)
Let's be here.

Brian (00:14)
Very excited to have David here with us. David is the author of a new book called, Untrapping Product Teams. So product owners, this is going to be a discussion that I know you're going to find very interesting. We're going to be talking about a lot of things that have to do with product teams and sort of the ins and outs of working with your products. So David, just for starters, what inspired you to write the book? What was the main problem you were trying to address when you sat down to write this?

David Pereira (00:42)
pain. I have worked as a product person for many companies throughout the years, different countries, different sides. And one thing that I realized is that there many things going wrong. And sometimes we just don't know that it's wrong and it hurts. Then when we realize the question is, what are we going to do about it? So I started writing about untrapped products. From this perspective,

Brian (00:43)
Ha ha ha ha.

David Pereira (01:12)
of there's something wrong, we might not see, but let's start from this and then maybe we can transform how we work for the better.

Brian (01:23)
Awesome. Yeah, that's a great take on it. Cause I agree. There's certain times when as a product owner, know I've, you you're kind of chugging along and things are going okay, but then something happens and it's sort of like, wow, this is painful. I don't know where it's, I can't put my finger on what's going wrong, but there's something happening here. And you you try to push through it and just get past it sometimes. And it's, that's not always the best strategy. I know you talk about there being sort of these dangerous traps that are kind of typical traps that product people fall into. Can you share any of those with us? What are some of the dangerous traps you identified here?

David Pereira (02:01)
Sure, there's the classic one called the gigantic backlog. So the team looked at it and we're talking about product owners, but sometimes product owners get demoted to backlog owners and they don't even notice that. So that's one of the most classic traps, but there's also another I call the calendar driven framework. You may think you work with agile, but then you realize that you only do what is in your calendar. So that digitates what you're doing and so on. And you fall prey to what I call as a meeting marathon.

Brian (02:38)
Yeah. I want to go back a little bit to your, to the big backlog kind of, idea there, because I, I know that's a issue I've talked with people about in class a lot. And, I just want to get your take on this. Cause I, one of the things, you know, we'll, we'll discuss in classes sometimes just the idea of having too big of a backlog and, and kind of wrestling with it and trying to get it in shape. But the question always comes up, you know, you what's the. the right number. We ask a question in class and say, how big is your backlog? And you'll see different reactions from people. Some people, less than 50, other people 250, other people 1,000 plus items. Is there a number? Is there a number that beyond which it's all of sudden now too big?

David Pereira (03:24)
Yeah, for sure. So for me, first is understanding what is the backlog about. It is a vehicle to drive whether when you look at the backlog, should be able to tell a story. You should know where you're heading to. But when you look there, if you see a 60 year old Christmas wishlist that has everything in but you cannot connect anything, that's when it starts smelling. So for me, a good backlog will have no more than I would say two, three things ahead of us. There might be some things that are directions that we will continue refine and get it better and so on. But if we would have something that takes us like six months of work to get it through, maybe we are doing project management.

Brian (04:12)
So that's an interesting distinction. if we're moving into product, how would you define that then if we're saying project management versus product management, how do you define that difference?

David Pereira (04:23)
So project management in general, we assume we know what needs to happen. So we start planning on when we do what and how long we're gonna invest in this and so on. Product management is more about starting what is value, what do we want to achieve? And then we start embracing the unknown, facing reality, learning from it. And then the backlog will emerge from our learnings. So it means we know where we want to land, but how we're gonna get there. We know where to start, but not the next 3, 4, 5 steps.

Brian (04:56)
Love that. So that gets us kind of into talking about road mapping a little bit because I know that's one of the things you talk about in your book and kind of the idea of trying to plan a little bit far in advance. So if we have a backlog, it's really more two to three sprints versus six months. Do you recommend the product owners roadmap for longer than two to three sprints or is the roadmap just a two to three sprint roadmap?

David Pereira (05:24)
Sure. So the roadmap for me, it is about a different flight level. So the backlog is the now. What are we doing right now in the next two sprints as we talked about? The roadmap, we're looking at what is the overarching goal we are pursuing. So that could be, for example, a milestone that we aim to achieve for the next two, three months. And then the backlog will march towards that. But for the roadmap, I think it's still important to have something like, what is the direction for six months that maybe we are considering. But the farther we go, the more I would say blurry it becomes. It's more like a direction and we can feel free to adapt that.

Brian (06:13)
So help me understand here, because one of the things I think that I hear a lot of questions about in class is, since 2020, the Scrum Guide has added this idea of a product goal. And we've always traditionally thought about having a vision for the product. So now we have sort of this nested nature of having a vision, a product goal. And of course, we've always had sprinkles. How do you see those things related? relating to some sort of road mapping.

David Pereira (06:45)
Let's take a company here as an example. I like looking at the SpaceX. What is the vision? The vision is something audacious, inspiring, that people can connect with. Might be very hard to achieve, but it gives us guidance. For SpaceX, would say two words, populate Mars. That's the vision. It's very far. And what would be a roadmap goal? For example, something they achieved already. It's a step to get closer to the vision. Build a reusable rocket. That's something they spent a lot of time doing, and that could be a