What Are the Unique Traits of Outstanding Product Owners?
The three characteristics Product Owners should have to excel on their journey.
The three characteristics Product Owners should have to excel on their journey.
In a Scrum Team, the Product Owner has many responsibilities. It’s overwhelming for a single person to match all expectations. Companies may have a slightly different perception of what a Product Owners is, but the general responsibilities are:
Craft a compelling Product Vision.
Maximize the value of the product.
Apply focus by deciding what to do as well as what not to.
Ensure alignment with stakeholders.
Manage the Product Backlog.
Given such a heavy set of responsibilities, what does it take to succeed as a Product Owner? During my journey, I’ve worked with many Product Owners in different scenarios. Still, I noticed some common traits among great Product Owners; let me share them with you.
1. Hope
After a decade on the road, I haven’t seen any team succeeding without failing. Setbacks are inevitable; not all of our ideas will work as expected. How we deal with failures is the key aspect.
“Optimism, like hope, means having a strong expectation that, in general, things will turn out all right in life, despite setbacks and frustrations.” ― Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
Hope is what differentiates optimists from pessimists. When you have hope for a better future, setbacks won’t hold you back from trying again. Optimists search for opportunities to get a better outcome next time, while pessimists blame something out of their control. And if you believe your situation is unchangeable, you miss the chance of evolving and get stuck in it.
You never know whether a solution will work until end-users have a chance to use it. No matter what you do, end-users will always surprise you. When you stumble upon failure, you should be optimistic because failure is never the end result; it’s just a step to a successful outcome.
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
2. Delay Gratification
In theory, Product Owners own the prioritization. In practice, that’s often not the case. That’s why many people cannot be a true Scrum Product Owner. But when you’re an exception, it’s easy to fall into a whole different set of traps. Some examples are:
Focus on stakeholders’ short-term satisfaction: stakeholders will always have many wishes. You may gain credit if you fulfill some of their wishes. Yet, most of the time, the stakeholders’ wants do not represent the end-users’ needs. It’s a dilemma to please stakeholders vs. do what matters the most.
Pressure developers to deliver more: software development is complex. If developers have no time to ensure a certain quality level, the tech debt pile accumulates. Eventually, the system becomes neither maintainable nor scalable. The faulty paradigm is to get more features in the short term vs. reduce the features to ensure a sustainable system.
Deliver solutions fast: when is the right time to work on a solution? In my opinion, once you have proven it’s the right solution to solve the end-users’ problem and it’s feasible from the business side. Still, it might take some time to acquire this knowledge. When you decide to skip the discovery phase to deliver the solution faster, this approach will eventually backfire. It’s like gambling; you never know if you will win or lose.
“Emotional self-control — delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness- underlies accomplishment of every sort”
― Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
In Product Management, you have no bullet-proof recipe to be successful. However, delaying gratification is a crucial trait of great Product Owners. It’s not because you can do something that you should. First, you should reflect on the goal you are pursuing, and then you can define the next step. But be aware that many of your actions will provide no gratification in the short-term; on the contrary, they might put you in some stressful situations, for example:
Saying no to stakeholders: when you say no to stakeholders' requests, a conflict might emerge. Yet, it’s essential to avoid distractions from the goal.
Reducing the output: when you focus on quality, you get less output in the short-term but better results in the medium/long-term.
Invest more time on product discovery: if you decide to invest proper time on product discovery, the final solution will get longer to go live. Still, you benefit from avoiding building the wrong solution.
“If you’re not cutting away more ideas than you keep, you’re probably not doing discovery work right.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
3. Leadership
In my understanding, leadership is not a title; it’s a set of attitudes. The Product Owner is a leader, not a manager. But many people perceive this role differently. Let me share with you some common misconceptions:
Empower vs. control: Product Owners should empower developers to solve the problems the way they see fit, instead of trying to command and control their work.
Give credits vs. claim the credits: whenever any initiative is successful, the Product Owner should give the team credit instead of claiming it.
Take the blame vs. shift to the others: eventually, something will fail. Product Owners should take responsibility for failures instead of blaming anyone in the team.
It’s hard to be a great leader. The secret is to forgo your ego. In my opinion, it’s impossible to be an outstanding Product Owner without being a great leader. You have to inspire the Scrum Teams to dream big, and you have to give them the space to explore alternatives to reach audacious goals.
“Ambition is refusing to quit on ourselves.
Leadership is refusing to quit on others.”
Outstanding Product Owners
The Product Owner role is stressful; everyone around you has high expectations of your results. You have to lead the team in the right direction while keeping stakeholders satisfied and maximizing the business and end-users' value.
The secrets of strong Product Owners are:
No matter how significant the setback is, be optimistic because failure is not the final state.
Be patient. Think thoroughly about what you should do instead of what you can. Don’t let short-term gratifications distract you from meaningful objectives.
Forgo your ego. Become a leader who inspires the team to reach what nobody else has ever done.
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