The Biggest Red Flags to Watch Before Accepting a Job as a Product Owner
How to evade the Product Ownership mines that will make you miserable
How to avoid the Product Ownership mines that will make you miserable
Recently, I got a similar question from many people, “How can I find a proper place to work as a Product Owner?” Although the market is hot, misconceptions about this role are common. That’s why people searching for a job should be careful where to go. Otherwise, they will end up in a trap, like I did a few times.
During the last ten years, I’ve been a Product Owner at seven different companies. Every place had different expectations of what I should do. The main differences were:
Decisions: the autonomy level to decide the future of the product varied dramatically. I owned the roadmap in some companies, while in other places, I could barely determine the next Sprint Goal.
Expectations: although every place expected me to keep stakeholders satisfied, only a few expected me to find problems worth solving. Each company interpreted the Product Owner role differently.
Activities: my activities were different in each company. Varying from writing extensive specifications to focusing on product discovery to avoid delivering pointless solutions.
Success: the definition of success was another critical aspect. In many places, delivering on time was the prime measure of success. In a few places, success meant achieving key objectives.
I want to share with you how to identify a REAL product company. By the end of this article, you will know what traits to look for.
Although I write from a Product Owner perspective, any person with an agile mindset will benefit from this content.
How Success Is Measured
The understanding of success is crucial for identifying decent product companies. A simple question during the interview can be enough; you could ask the hiring manager, “How do you describe a successful Product Owner?” Let’s understand what you should pay particular attention to in the answers.
Bad Product Companies
If the company is clueless about the Product Owner role, you might get answers similar to:
Maximizing the features delivered by the team: in-short, this is the feature factory anti-pattern. The company wants to make the feature production faster; the more, the better. Nobody cares if the feature delivers value at all.
Stakeholders' satisfaction: if you ensure the stakeholders are happy, you are successful. Such companies expect you to please stakeholders instead of collaborating with them to deliver more value.
Matching deadlines: the higher-level of the company defines arbitrary deadlines; matching them makes you successful. In this scenario, you receive pressure to keep deadlines instead of doing what should be done.
Great Product Companies
In contrast to bad product companies, great ones will provide you answers similar to:
Solve worthwhile problems: your responsibility is to find a relevant problem for the end-user, valuable for the business, and feasible for the tech team. Once you identify such a situation, you are empowered to explore different solutions.
Stakeholders alignment: it’s vital to ensure a precise alignment with stakeholders. They know which goal you are pursuing, why it is important, and how they can collaborate to achieve it.
Define and achieve key objectives: as a Product Owner, you determine key objectives. Instead of focusing on matching an arbitrary deadline, you define the impact you want to generate. The focus is on the outcome and never on the output.
“Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”― Daniel H. Pink
How the Roadmap Is Defined
Another vital aspect is how the company works with roadmaps. You should understand the process of defining the future work. You could ask a simple question, “How is the roadmap determined?” Let’s understand some possible answers.
Bad Product Companies
Some companies do not provide enough autonomy to the Product Owner. They might be imprisoned by the command & control mindset. In such places, you might get answers like the following:
Yearly roadmap: the company has an annual meeting, where the outlook for the next whole year is established. The intention is to craft a plan aligned with the company’s goals, but the main problem is that such roadmaps are seldom reviewed. It’s a yearly commitment without space for changes.
Company leadership: the product team is not part of defining what goes into the roadmap. The company's higher-level determines what will make to the roadmap and establishes a deadline written in stone.
Focus on the solution: the roadmap contains the solutions to deliver. For example, build an app for our sellers to handle all sales from their smartphones. The solution is defined, the team has to implement it, even if that doesn’t solve the end-users’ problem. The team has no space to learn because they must match arbitrary deadlines.
Great Product Companies
Empowerment is essential to build great products. Otherwise, the team will become a rule-follower instead of a problem-solver. Great product companies define the roadmap like this:
Quarterly goals: every quarter, a new roadmap is established. A quarterly roadmap strikes a better perspective between too short-term and too long-term goals. The purpose is to ensure each team can focus on a smaller set of problems without missing the big picture.
Product team: the company leadership defines the objectives to pursue, while the product team determines the initiatives to reach them. For example, the company wants to reduce customer service costs. Then, the product team identify which solutions can lead to the desired outcome.
Focus on the problem: the roadmap contains only objectives to pursue. The product team is responsible for finding a suitable solution, and they are also accountable for the outcome of the chosen solution.
“The best solutions come from collaboration between the people with the problems to solve and the people who can solve them.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
How the Product Team Is Structured
The teams’ topology plays a significant role in the team’s success. Each company structures the teams differently; you should understand its variations. During the interview, the important question is, “How is the product teams’ structure?” let’s understand the nuances of some possible answers.
Bad Product Companies
Unfortunately, many companies create silos instead of teams. Each team lives on its bubble, collaboration among teams is a hassle because each one has its own goals.
No product team: the company has no product organization. Product Owners may be part of the business teams or even part of the tech team. The company lacks a Chief Product Officer to overlook the product and coach Product Owners. The result is dreadful; Product Owners may lead the Scrum Teams in conflicting directions; the ultimate goal is to please the business.
Component teams: each team is responsible for a micro-component of the product. Component teams impede a person to be a true Scrum Product Owner because of the lack of an end-to-end responsibility. Dependencies slow teams down significantly.
Great Product Companies
Autonomy is a crucial aspect of an outstanding Scrum Team. Without autonomy, the team won’t make the needed decisions to build products that change people’s lives for the better.
Product team: all Product Owners are part of the same team. The CPO or a Head of Products overlooks the product strategy and dedicate time to bring each Product Owner to a higher level. The purpose is to ensure each Scrum Team maximizes the product value. Product Owners collaborate to reach the business’ objectives.
End-to-end responsibilities: the Scrum Teams have an end-to-end responsibility that allows them to experiment with different solutions until they find fit. Without dependencies among teams, they are fast because they are solely responsible for solving problems they work on.
“A team is not a group of people that work together. A team is a group of people that trust each other. “— Simon Sinek
Final Thoughts
I think it’s impossible to find a perfect product company. Each company brings different challenges. How you deal with the hurdles is what determines how prosperous you can be.
If you are searching for a Product Owner job, consider a place where you will:
Be empowered to make decisions on the future of the product.
Be able to focus on the impact you aspire to generate instead of the feature stakeholders want.
Be part of a team that has an end-to-end responsibility.
“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” — Simon Sinek
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