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Melissa Perri (author, founder of Product Institute)10 November 2024

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about SAFe and the product owner role

7Frameworks
15Insights

Episode overview

Lenny Rachitsky and Melissa Perri trace product ownership from Scrum’s developer-led origins through its adoption in large enterprise transformations. Perri argues that rigid SAFe implementations often separate discovery from delivery, reduce product owners to backlog administrators, and obscure customer and business outcomes. She recommends unified product-management career paths, experienced product leadership, enabling product operations, and adaptable processes focused on delivering measurable customer value.

Key ideas

  • The product-owner role emerged through Scrum primarily to prioritize developers’ work, not from the broader discipline of modern product management.
  • SAFe offers large enterprises a legible operating model for coordinating teams, but it does not adequately cover product discovery, strategy, leadership, or go-to-market work.
  • Rigid back-to-back sprints and quarterly commitments can crowd out customer research, experimentation, measurement, and adaptation.
  • Companies transforming their product practices should connect strategy, organizational design, product operations, culture, incentives, discovery, delivery, and launch—not treat development process as the entire operating model.
  • Product owners should develop customer-research, strategy, measurement, and outcome ownership skills, and organizations should create a unified career ladder from associate product manager upward.
  • Experienced product leaders and practitioners should be distributed throughout transforming organizations so less-experienced employees can observe and learn effective product management.
  • Processes should be inspected and adapted according to whether they help teams move quickly and deliver valuable outcomes to customers.
  • Short Scrum certifications may help with some enterprise hiring requirements, but they do not establish that someone can perform end-to-end product management.

Transcript available · source text is retained privately and is not published

Frameworks in this episode

Leadership6 steps

Baseline, Train, Practice, Level-Set

Turn hundreds of legacy product owners into real PMs by letting people self-select out

Read →
Leadership5 steps

One Product Ladder (Kill the PO/PM Split)

Collapse product owner and product manager into a single APM → PM → Senior PM ladder

Read →
Mindset6 steps

The Agile Industrial Complex Test

Before you adopt a methodology, ask how the people selling it make their money

Read →
Leadership5 steps

The 'Can You See What Good Looks Like?' Staffing Test

If nobody in your org has done it before, no amount of training will produce it

Read →
Strategy6 steps

The Four-Pillar Product Operating Model

Build a product operating model on strategy, org design, product ops and incentives — not a dev framework

Read →
Self-Mastery5 steps

The Product Owner Escape Ladder

Five moves to climb out of the order-taker trap without quitting first

Read →
Communication5 steps

The Value-Framed Product Résumé

Rewrite every bullet from process to problem, decision, and metric moved

Read →

People & resources mentioned

Attributed to the moment in the episode. Timestamps are approximate.

People · 10

  • Melissa PerriMentionsThrough teaching, consulting, interim CPO work, and Product Institute, she has worked with thousands of product managers and hundreds of companies.

    “Melissa is a legend in the product management Community”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
  • Lenny RachitskyMentionstoday we've got another very special compilation episode something I've been pulling on more and more with the podcast and the newsletter

    “today my guest is Melissa Perry”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
  • Christina GilbertMentionsI'm excited to chat with Christina Gilbert, the founder of OneSchema

    “Christina Gilbert the founder of one schema”

    ▶ Watch at ~5:00approx.
  • Ken SchwaberCoinedNamed as an early Scrum practitioner and co-author of the Scrum Guide.

    “that was Ken schweber Jeff southernland”

    ▶ Watch at ~12:00approx.
  • Ron JeffriesCoinedIdentified as the originator of Extreme Programming in the transcript.

    “there was um XP extreme programming that was started by Ron Jeff”

    ▶ Watch at ~12:30approx.
  • Jeff PattonMentionsA product manager close to the Agile Manifesto authors who did not attend or sign it.

    “the one person who was really close to them who was a product manager was Jeff Patton”

    ▶ Watch at ~13:00approx.
  • Jeff SutherlandCoinedNamed as an early Scrum practitioner and co-author of the Scrum Guide.

    “Jeff and Ken as I was talking about they were independently kind of coming up with scrum”

    ▶ Watch at ~13:30approx.
  • Dean LeffingwellCoinedNamed as the creator of SAFe.

    “Dean leffingwell came up with it”

    ▶ Watch at ~27:00approx.
  • Marty CaganMentionsMarty has been helping product teams and product managers improve their craft processes and careers for over 20 years

    “I know Marty does this too for we focusing on processes”

    ▶ Watch at ~43:30approx.
  • Jeff GothelfMentionsmentioned

    “they try to drop things like lean ux in there which Jeff gothal think is hilarious”

    ▶ Watch at ~45:00approx.

Resources · 30

  • Product InstituteCoinedcourse · Melissa Perri

    “the CEO and founder of the product Institute which trains product managers at all levels”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
  • Product OperationsCoinedbook · Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles

    “and her most recent book product operations”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
  • Escaping the Build TrapCoinedbook · Melissa Perri

    “she's the author of the foundational book escaping the build trap”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:00approx.
  • PendoRecommendssoftware · Pendo

    “visit pendo.io Lenny to create your free pendo account today”

    ▶ Watch at ~4:30approx.
  • OneSchemaCoinedsoftware · Christina Gilbert

    “Christina Gilbert the founder of one schema”

    ▶ Watch at ~5:00approx.
  • OneSchema FileFeedsMentionsproduct · OneSchema

    “we just launched one scheme of file feeds which allows you to build an integration with any system in 15 minutes”

    ▶ Watch at ~5:30approx.
  • Capital OneMentionscompany

    “Capital One is a great example that took their agile transformation and started adding product management on it”

    ▶ Watch at ~9:30approx.
  • GoogleMentionscompany · Google

    “they were in Google they were in all of these companies Amazon”

    ▶ Watch at ~11:00approx.
  • AmazonMentionscompany · Jeff Bezos

    “they were in Google they were in all of these companies Amazon”

    ▶ Watch at ~11:00approx.
  • Manifesto for Agile Software DevelopmentCoinedpaper · Agile Manifesto authors

    “in 2001 the agile Manifesto was written a bunch of developers got together in Park City Utah”

    ▶ Watch at ~12:00approx.
  • Extreme ProgrammingMentionsother · Kent Beck and collaborators

    “there was um XP extreme programming”

    ▶ Watch at ~12:30approx.
  • Scrum GuideCoinedpaper · Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland

    “they ended up writing the scrum guide”

    ▶ Watch at ~13:30approx.
  • ScrumMentionsother · Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland

    “the product owner in general first showed up with scrum”

    ▶ Watch at ~15:30approx.
  • OpenSkyUsescompany

    “when we were doing scrum when I did it with my team back in Open Sky”

    ▶ Watch at ~23:00approx.
  • SAFeMentionsother · Scaled Agile, Inc.

    “scaled agile framework came out of the desire to figure out how do we scale scrum”

    ▶ Watch at ~26:30approx.
  • LeSSMentionsother

    “there was also less which is um a scaled agile framework”

    ▶ Watch at ~27:00approx.
  • Scrum@ScaleCoinedother · Jeff Sutherland

    “Jeff southernland who did scrum has scrum at scale”

    ▶ Watch at ~27:00approx.
  • Lean UXMentionsbook · Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

    “they try to drop things like lean ux in there”

    ▶ Watch at ~45:00approx.
  • CodaUsessoftware · Coda

    “I use Kota every day to coordinate my podcasting and newsletter workflows”

    ▶ Watch at ~48:00approx.
  • CodaRecommendssoftware · Coda

    “head over to coda.io Lenny and sign up to get six free months of the team plan”

    ▶ Watch at ~48:30approx.
  • SAFeMentionsother · Scaled Agile, Inc.

    “I do not recommend using safe”

    ▶ Watch at ~49:00approx.
  • US BankMentionscompany

    “she's Chief product officer at uh US Bank for small business banking”

    ▶ Watch at ~52:30approx.
  • ShopifyMentionscompany · Shopify

    “she worked at Shopify she saw how great teams worked”

    ▶ Watch at ~52:30approx.
  • Discover FinancialMentionscompany

    “she had worked at Discover Financial leading the transformation there”

    ▶ Watch at ~53:00approx.
  • Green Dot BankMentionscompany

    “the CPO of Green Dot bank”

    ▶ Watch at ~53:00approx.
  • AthenahealthMentionscompany

    “when I did the transformation at Athena Health we had 365 product managers”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:14:00approx.
  • McKinsey & CompanyMentionscompany

    “a lot of safe was actually introduced to organizations from McKenzie”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:18:30approx.
  • Product Thinking PodcastCoinedpodcast · Melissa Perri

    “I run a podcast too called the product Thinking podcast”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:23:00approx.link ↗
  • LinkedInUseswebsite · LinkedIn

    “you can find me on LinkedIn”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:23:00approx.
  • Lenny's PodcastMentionspodcast · Lenny Rachitsky

    “you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny podcast.com”

    ▶ Watch at ~1:24:00approx.

Spot an error or want something removed? Request a correction or removal.

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 2

Myth Buster23:00

If You Already Talk to Each Other, You Don't Need Scrum

Perri argues that small, experienced teams do not need the overhead of scrum. At Open Sky her team shipped weekly instead of in two-week sprints and skipped daily stand-ups because they already talked constantly. The value of a framework is forcing conversation about the work; if you already do that, the framework is unnecessary overhead.

  • Scrum's overhead is designed for larger-scale companies, not small experienced teams.
  • At Open Sky the team shipped weekly and dropped daily stand-ups.
  • Frameworks help by forcing teams to talk about the work; if you already do, you don't need one.
  • A defined methodology isn't required as long as you have a way of shipping value to customers.

“we skipped daily stand stand-ups we didn't need to stand around and talk about it”

Melissa Perri · 23:00

“you don't need scrum you don't need to be prescribed to this two week Sprint”

Melissa Perri · 23:30
#startups#scrum#process#hot-take
Myth Buster43:30

Processes Aren't the Enemy at Scale

Pushing back on the anti-process crowd (including Marty Cagan), Perri argues that large organizations genuinely need tooling like roadmapping software for transparency. When you have thousands of teams, you have no way to see whether they're tied back to business goals without that infrastructure.

  • Perri disagrees with blanket anti-process sentiment aimed at large organizations.
  • Roadmapping tools provide necessary transparency across thousands of teams.
  • Blocking-and-tackling process is required for a software transformation to be efficient.
  • The problem with SAFe isn't process itself, it's failing to connect value back to product teams.

“I don't think processes are the enemy here”

Melissa Perri · 43:30

“you have no idea what your 4,000 teams are doing”

Melissa Perri · 44:00
#process#scale#transparency#roadmaps

Hot Take· 4

Hot Take34:30

SAFe Turns Product Owners Into Order Takers

Perri explains how SAFe formally splits the product manager and product owner, putting discovery with the PM and leaving the PO purely tactical. The result is product owners who become order takers with no exposure to strategy, and a career track that often doesn't even connect back to product management.

  • SAFe splits PM (with system architect and release train engineer) from PO (with the scrum team).
  • Discovery work goes to the product manager, leaving the PO tactical and order-taking.
  • Product owners get no exposure to strategy, market research or deciding what's valuable.
  • In many orgs the PO and PM tracks report to different people and aren't the same career path.

“you are basically making these product owners order takers they are extremely tactical”

Melissa Perri · 34:30
#safe#product-owner#careers#hot-take
Hot Take49:00

Why She Does Not Recommend Using SAFe

Perri states flatly that she does not recommend SAFe. Everyone she's talked to who found success with it ultimately ripped it up and turned it into something else, meaning they weren't really doing SAFe by the book. SAFe brings some rigor but has almost nothing about doing good product management, and taken too far it destroys things.

  • Perri does not recommend using SAFe.
  • Everyone who succeeded with SAFe ended up ripping it up and changing it.
  • There is very little in SAFe about doing good product management.
  • It can help bring rigor in certain areas, but pushed too far it will destroy things.

“I do not recommend using safe”

Melissa Perri · 49:00

“every single person I have talked to who likes safe found success was safe they ended up ripping it up and making it into something…”

Melissa Perri · 49:00
#safe#hot-take#product-management
Hot Take56:00

Take Scrum Away and the Product Owner Doesn't Exist

Perri's core thesis: the product owner is only a role inside scrum and doesn't exist without it, but product management is always needed. Therefore every product owner should fundamentally be a product manager, and companies shouldn't maintain separate PO and PM career tracks.

  • Take scrum away and you still need product management, but the product owner role vanishes.
  • All product owners should fundamentally be product managers.
  • Principal IC product managers are fine, but there's no real difference between an IC PO and IC PM.
  • Separate PO and PM titles just confuse everyone.

“product owner doesn't exist without scrum that's not a thing but you still need product managers”

Melissa Perri · 56:00

“all product owners should be product managers”

Melissa Perri · 56:00
#product-owner#product-management#careers#hot-take
Hot Take1:07:00

The Agile Industrial Complex and Its Certifications

Perri calls the ecosystem of agile coaches, trainers and certification bodies the 'agile industrial complex.' They make money by consulting on processes and charging around $2,500 per person for two-day certification classes. A certified scrum product owner credential doesn't mean someone can actually do the job.

  • Agile coaches, trainers and scrum orgs make money via consulting and certifications.
  • A CSPO comes from a two-day class costing roughly $2,500 per person.
  • The certificate doesn't prove someone can do product management.
  • Certifications may open doors at scrum/SAFe shops but signal the opposite at top tech firms.

“we call it the agile industrial complex”

Melissa Perri · 1:07:00

“a certificate at the end of a two-day class that says they're certified scrum product owner doesn't necessarily mean they could do the job”

Melissa Perri · 1:07:30
#agile#certifications#hot-take#consulting

Explainer· 2

Explainer13:00

The Agile Manifesto Was Written by Developers, Not PMs

Melissa Perri traces the origin of agile to the 2001 Agile Manifesto, written by software developers in Park City, Utah, who were independently working on ways to build software better. She stresses that no product manager was in the room, which is why the product owner role that emerged from scrum was never really about product management.

  • The Agile Manifesto was written in 2001 by developers practicing scrum, XP, kanban and other methods.
  • No product manager signed it or attended the meeting; Jeff Patton was close but never signed it.
  • Everything was approached from a 'how do we build better software' developer perspective.
  • The product owner role therefore did not originate from product management as practiced in Silicon Valley.

“nobody who wrote the agile Manifesto was actually a product manager”

Melissa Perri · 13:00
#agile#history#product-owner#scrum
Explainer20:00

The Product Owner Role Was Built to Feed Developers, Not Do Product

Perri explains that the product owner role was created inside scrum simply to help developers prioritize what to work on and keep the backlog full. Product owner training is typically a two-day class covering backlogs, stand-ups and prioritization, but nothing about experimentation, market research or data, which is what real product management requires.

  • Product owner was a mechanism to prioritize work for developers, held accountable for working on the highest-value things.
  • Standard training is a two-day class on backlogs, stand-ups and prioritization.
  • It teaches nothing about experimentation, market research or data.
  • Early scrum guides said the product owner could be the customer, a developer, or a department manager, not necessarily a PM.

“this product owner rooll did not emerge from product management as we know it today it was a way to help the developers prioritize what…”

Melissa Perri · 20:00
#product-owner#scrum#product-management

Story· 4

Story28:00

The Bank PO Writing User Stories 40 Hours a Week for a Login API

Perri recounts her first encounter with SAFe while training product managers at a bank in 2015. A product owner told her she had no time to talk to customers because she spent all week writing user stories, and her entire scope was the login API. It crystallized how SAFe reduced product owners to backlog-filling order takers.

  • A bank product owner said she couldn't talk to customers because she wrote user stories full time.
  • Her entire product scope was the login API, which already worked.
  • A separate product manager talked to customers and told her what to build.
  • This was Perri's first real exposure to how SAFe splits and narrows these roles.

“she's like the login API for a bank I'm like can you log in she's like yeah”

Melissa Perri · 29:00
#safe#product-owner#banking#story
Story50:00

The Dutch Water Company That Went Bankrupt Adopting SAFe

Perri shares a news story about a water company in the Netherlands that adopted SAFe in its IT teams and went bankrupt. The teams got so caught up learning SAFe processes that their new invoicing and payment-collection system took too long to deploy, and they couldn't collect payments from customers.

  • A Netherlands water company adopted SAFe in its IT teams.
  • Teams were so consumed by learning the process that deployment dragged on.
  • They couldn't collect payments because the invoicing system wasn't shipped in time.
  • The company went bankrupt, an extreme case of process crowding out customer value.

“they couldn't collect payments from customers because they got so caught up in the process”

Melissa Perri · 50:30
#safe#story#failure#process
Story58:00

The Product Owner Who Pushed Back and Got Promoted

In a workshop, a product owner told Perri she didn't think her team was working on the right things but feared getting fired if she said so. Perri encouraged her to raise it with her manager. She put together a case, said she didn't think they should be working on it, and was promoted instead.

  • A product owner feared being fired for questioning her team's priorities.
  • Perri urged her to bring the concern to her manager.
  • In product, your job isn't tied to a single project ending.
  • The PO made the case, and the company promoted her.

“she put together this whole thing went and said I don't think we should be working on this and they promoted her”

Melissa Perri · 58:30
#product-owner#careers#story#advice
Story1:14:00

At Athena Health, People Opted Out Once They Saw the PM Job

Perri describes transforming 365 product managers at Athena Health. After training everyone and giving them a chance to practice, many realized product management wasn't what they wanted, dealing with influence, people and accountability, and opted out. They were moved into operations, data, or user research roles rather than cut.

  • Athena Health had 365 people with scattered product titles, all converted to product managers.
  • After training and practice, many raised their hands and opted out of the PM role.
  • They found the influence and accountability demands too intense.
  • Nobody was cut; opt-outs moved into operations, data or user-research roles.

“when I did the transformation at Athena Health we had 365 product managers”

Melissa Perri · 1:14:00

“a lot of people raised their hand and said oh no no this is not what I wanted to do”

Melissa Perri · 1:14:30
#transformation#product-management#story#careers

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway41:30

A Development Framework Is Not a Product Operating Model

For companies trying to transform, Perri warns that agile methodologies are only a development operating model and won't help with strategy, go-to-market or product management. She lays out the real operating model: product strategy, organizational design, product operations infrastructure, and culture and incentives.

  • Agile methodologies are just a development operating model, not a full product operating model.
  • A real model covers product strategy, org design, product operations, and culture and incentives.
  • Many large orgs lack the infrastructure for teams to get data or talk to customers.
  • Leaders must ask whether they reward shipping volume or actual value tied to business goals.

“that's just a development operating model that's not actually going to help you with go to market with launching your products and with product management”

Melissa Perri · 41:30
#transformation#operating-model#product-strategy
Takeaway1:02:30

No Top Tech Company Has Product Owners

Perri and Lenny reinforce that the job-market data shows no top tech company uses the product owner title. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix all have product managers, not product owners. Product owners cluster in non-software-first companies like banks, telecoms and pharma.

  • No top software-first tech company uses a product owner role.
  • Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix all staff product managers instead.
  • Product owners are concentrated in banks, telecoms and pharmaceutical companies.
  • The distinction reflects software-first vs non-software-first business models.

“no company you you've heard of that's a tech company has a product owner”

Lenny Rachitsky · 1:02:30
#product-owner#tech-industry#careers
Takeaway1:03:00

Get Scrum Off Your Resume and Show Value Instead

For product owners wanting to move into tech, Perri advises rewriting your resume around value and outcomes, not agile process. Instead of 'I prioritized the backlog,' describe the problem you solved, the customers you talked to, and the business metrics you moved, using a concrete login-API security example.

  • Describe your job from a value perspective, not agile cadences.
  • Don't list backlog prioritization; describe the problem solved and metrics moved.
  • Example: leading login-API security work to meet regulations and save the bank millions.
  • As a hiring CPO, Perri rejects resumes that lead with 'implemented scrum processes.'

“get scrum out of there right talk about what value you brought to the users and what metrics you moved”

Melissa Perri · 1:03:30
#careers#resume#product-management#advice