20 Articles to Help Product Owners Combat the Anti-patterns
Sharpen your mindset, broaden your perspective, then beat the misconceptions.
Sharpen your mindset, broaden your perspective, then beat the misconceptions.
When you get a job as a Product Owner, the only certainty you have is facing anti-patterns. I wish it could be different, but it’s not. We don’t live in a perfect world. It doesn’t matter the framework you work with; misconceptions are awaiting you. Your success depends on how prepared you are to overcome the daunting challenges on your way.
Although challenges can make you scared, don’t worry, you’re in luck because you don’t need to figure out everything on your own. Many experts in product management are generous; you can find their most valuable insights for free. On Medium, there are 53K articles related to Product Management. That’s amazing, but I’m sure you don’t want to invest your time reading all of these stories. The question is, ‘how can you identify the ones you can benefit the most from?’
No worries, I got you covered. As an extremely curious person, I’ve read thousands of stories on Medium. I’ve identified the ones that will help you beat the anti-patterns. So let me share them with you. After reading the following stories, I hope no anti-pattern can survive in your presence.
To simplify the reading, I clustered the stories into four groups:
Learner mindset
Attitudes of successful product leaders
Beating the anti-patterns
Solid product management
1. Learner Mindset
The ultimate responsibility of Product Owners is to maximize the value the product generates. Yet, many professionals are clueless about what value really is. To understand what value is and how to deliver it, you have to develop a learner mindset.
Here are four recommendations for you to broaden your mindset:
Paradoxes of Product Management, by Anthony Murphy
Come up with ideas like you’re right but test them like you’re wrong!
Do You Have The Mindset Of A Problem Solver? by Tim Rettig
Entrepreneurship is, in its essence, an incredibly selfless endeavor. It is only when you genuinely are in the game for the primary reason of solving people’s problems, that you are going to win.
7 Things I’ve Learned About Lean Startup, by David J Bland
Remember that the goal of the MVP isn’t to scale or generate revenue, it’s to learn in the market by generating qualitative & quantitative data.
The MVP is dead, long life to the MAP. (Minimum Awesome Product), by Carlos Beneyto
The true competition is to offer a better experience on our product.
Attitudes of Successful Product Leaders
When you accept playing the Product Owner role, you should be ready to carry a heavy burden. Everyone expects a lot from you. That’s why your attitudes on communication and decision-making are critical for your success. Your role is to lead the team in successful directions. Therefore, you’ve got to be sharp in communication and bold in decision-making.
Here are five articles to give you essential perspectives on communication and decision-making:
5 Steps To Say No Gracefully To Product Ideas, by Product Dave 💡
Your job is to prioritise the company’s resources to solve a valuable problem effectively.
The Choice Overload Effect: Why simplicity is the key to perfecting your experience, by Jennifer Clinehens
The negative effects of choice can be more severe than a missed sale. Research shows that when there are too many options, customers feel anxious, will disengage, and can even become depressed.
10 Communication Patterns Used by Great Leaders, by Dave Bailey
Communication goes far beyond ‘choosing the right words’. It involves understanding your audience, actively listening, and being able to empathise with people.
Making Good Decisions as a Product Manager, by Brandon Chu
Your goal shouldn’t be to always make the right decision, it should be to invest the right amount of time in a making a decision relative to its importance.
The Cryptic Language of Non-Verbal Communication, by Robert Roy Britt
Research of non-verbal communication isn’t just for the sake of science, or television, or even catching criminals. It can help us understand ourselves.
Beating the Anti-patterns
How can you overcome the anti-patterns? The first step is to recognize them. After that, you can define the measures to treat them accordingly. The challenge is that once you are deep in a context, it’s hard for you to identify the problems because sometimes you are the one who caused them.
The following articles should provide you some ideas on how to identify the misconceptions spread all over multiple places.
14 Signs you’re working in a Scrum Feature Factory, by Maarten Dalmijn
Scrum doesn’t provide Product Management expertise as part of the framework. It’s up to you to figure out. If Product Management principles aren’t applied, then there are no Product Management techniques to polish and improve through Scrum’s inspection and adaptation.
What the Scrum Guide Doesn’t Say, by Dan Ray
Scrum is not a process, technique, or definitive method. Rather, it is a framework within which you can employ various processes and techniques.
Scrum Has Hit the Glass Ceiling, by Willem-Jan Ageling
Top management believes it is too risky to have truly self-managing teams. This is why Scrum hits a glass ceiling
We Need One Complete Product Team, by Todd Lankford
The desire to split Discovery and Delivery stems from an unfortunate misinterpretation. In error, we assume Scrum is only concerned with creating working software. So we form a separate Discovery Team to take a customer-focused view.
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): when you don’t have the guts to do Scrum, by Maarten Dalmijn
It takes guts to climb a mountain, just like it takes guts to do Scrum.Rock climbing is scary, messy, uncertain and difficult.
Solid Product Management
Without solid product management skills, Product Owners fail. It’s complex to build products and services that deliver real value. To excel in the Product Owner role, you have to advance your product management knowledge continually. The moment you fall into your comfort zone, you become outdated in a blink of an eye.
Here are some articles I believe to be useful for you:
OKR vs. KPIs, What is the Difference? by Felipe Castro
The first thing you have to understand is that OKR is a system that forces you to separate what really matters from the rest, and set clear priorities. To do that, you have to learn to say no — a lot.
10 Traits of Great PMs, by Noah Weiss
Great PMs optimize for learning
They voraciously seek out insights about customer needs and pain points through research, experiments, and cross-functional partners. They course correct constantly.
12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory, by John Cutler
Infrequent (acknowledged) failures and scrapped work. No removed features. Primary measure of success is delivered features, not delivered outcomes. Work is rarely discarded in light of data and learning. Often the team lacks the prerequisite safety to admit misfires
A surprisingly simple technique for a rockstar product vision: The Ladder of Needs, by Catherine (Kit) Ulrich
Understanding the why behind your product is the fastest way to sell your vision, but more importantly, it also allows you to plan a more strategic product roadmap. It allows you to consider whether your initiatives are a new ‘what’, improvements to ‘how’, or product extensions that further support your ‘why’.
How to craft a Product Goal, by Sjoerd Nijland
Product Goals shouldn’t be vague or overly generic, like “make the world a better place”. It has to be clear for whom the outcome will be valuable and why.
What do designers really want from product managers? by Jess Eddy
The relationship between designer and product manager is an interesting one. We work closely together, and there is much overlap between what both people do and bring to the table. Pair this with no shortage of opinions and throw in a little sprinkling of ego and we have a party!
Endnote
It takes time and courage to become a strong Product Owner. Anti-patterns will give you a hard time. People will pressure you to do what they think is right, no matter how knowledgeable they are in product management. That’s why you need to keep sharpening your skill set.
Don’t be afraid of conflicts. Instead, be afraid of delivering a product nobody needs.
