Which skills do you need to succeed as a Product Owner?
The six skills that will help you to overcome the daily challenges of being a Product Owner
The six skills that will help you to overcome the daily challenges of being a Product Owner
The Product Owner is the most complex role of Scrum, in my opinion. If you ask ten different companies what a Product Owner is, you may get ten different answers. Scrum puts a lot of responsibility in one single person. Yet, the Scrum Guide is vague on how to perform a great job as a Product Owner. In other words, to succeed as a Product Owner, you are on your own, my friend. Good luck.
The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.
— The Scrum Guide, November 2017
What takes to stand out as a Product Owner?
Over my journey as a Product Owner, I’ve been through countless challenges. Sometimes I experienced positive outcomes, other times adverse ones. But, I’ve always learned from everything. After many learnings, I identified the required skills to thrive as a Product Owner. Let me share with you what worked well for me.
Communication: Product Owners sit between chairs. We need to understand what matters for our customers. We also need to work closely with the stakeholders to identify business opportunities. And we must collaborate with the Development Teams to build meaningful products. That’s why we need to master communication.
Decision-making: the daily life as a Product Owner brings multiple choices. Product Owners need to be ready to make decisions with or without data. Time matters a lot.
Focus: to achieve something relevant, Product Owners need to learn how to focus on what matters the most, and say no to everything that distracts from the goals.
Problem solver mindset: first comes the problem, then the solution. Product Owners need to frame problems precisely and collaborate with the teams to build meaningful and delightful products.
Results evaluation: output is only part of the journey. The outcome is a vital aspect. Product Owners should understand the end-results. Otherwise, they can’t be sure if they are maximizing the value for the business and customers.
Continuous learning: successful Product Owners take every day as a chance to learn something. They learn about clients, markets, opportunities, and so on. Curiosity should be our fuel.
Communication
Product Owners have to orchestrate the communication between many different audiences. Until one masters the communication skill, it’s impossible to succeed as a Product Owner.
The challenge is not to communicate with multiple people, but to understand what is not said. Product Owners should identify the underlying customers’ problems. To succeed in this role, we have to find what the customers need, instead of what they want. We need to be able to shift from implementing tasks to achieving goals.
Communication is a two-way street. That’s why we should strive to build a shared understanding. It’s vital to know how to communicate the right piece of information to the relevant audience at the adequate moment through the proper method. It seems obvious, right? But it’s tough to do it.
Even nowadays, E-mail is the preferred communication method. E-mail may be the easiest way of spreading information, but does it result in effective communication? Product Owners should ensure the other side understood the message as we intended to transport, and we have to avoid waste. We shouldn’t spread information to people who don’t need it.
Did you know that more than 50% of the communication is non-verbal? So why do people still use e-mail so often? Be careful! E-mail is inefficient.
The best contact occurs personally, even better in front of a whiteboard. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Agile Manifesto
When you grab a marker and head for the whiteboard, the room dynamics change and people tend to participate more. The act of getting ideas, yours and your teams, on the board gives pause to the conversation as the team focuses on making sure the ideas being communicated are accurate. Team members are more apt to point out gaps when they are staring them in the face.
— Kedron Rhodes, 3 Ways a Whiteboard Can Improve Communication & Participation
If you want to know more about non-verbal communication, read this article.
The Cryptic Language of Non-Verbal Communication
Scientists are starting to decipher the things we don’t say with wordselemental.medium.com
Decision-making
Are you bold to make tough decisions even if you don’t have data to back your choices? Can you make fast decisions every day? If not, then you should move out of your comfort zone if you want to succeed as a Product Owner.
Product Owners should be able to make decisions in a blink of an eye. You may disagree with me on it. How can we make decisions so fast without any in-depth analysis? We have to trust our guts and make a decision. Not making a decision is generally more damaging than making a bad one. Most decisions are reversible, but wasted time will never come back.
Our brain is amazing in connecting the dots. Our experiences are safely stored. The gut feeling is how the brain presents the best choice identified for us. Still, we often doubt it because we can’t explain the reason. Consequently, we may postpone the decision.
Trust your gut feelings, and the explanation will come later. Malcolm Gladwell explains it more in-depth on his book Blink. Gladwell mentions that when we postpone decisions to search for answers, we will probably come up to the conclusion our first instinct was indeed the best choice. So trust your guts and make decisions! Don’t waste time!
“If you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so. But it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct and intuition, taste, heart.”
— Jeff Bezos
To improve your decision-making skills, I’d recommend to read:
Fear of Better Options (FOBO) is The Reason You Can’t Make a Tough Decision
The freedom of choice enhances feelings of autonomy, freedom and promotes one‘s sense of personal control.medium.com
Making Good Decisions as a Product Manager
While product managers may not build the actual product, they do produce something very tangible for a team: decisions.blackboxofpm.com
Focus
Focus means saying NO to whatever distracts you from your goal. It is hard to say no, because it generates conflict! And Product Owners need to keep sustainable relationships. But to focus, we should say no as often as possible. Product Owners should be fearless of conflicts.
“When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer.”
― Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business
Focus is a frequently misused word. I think the meaning of focus is lost somewhere, because sentence likes “we are focusing on A, B and C” are common to hear. But the question is, where is the focus? Prioritizing everything, means prioritizing nothing.
High-performance teams can deliver terrific results by focusing on what matters the most. The Product Owner should be able to give the team the chance of focusing. Some tips:
Define what the priority is
Define what is NOT the priority
Make priorities visible to everyone
Don’t write Sprint Goals using the word “and”
Say NO to everything, which distracts the team
Recommended reading to sharpen your focus:
If You Don’t Say No Many Times a Day. You Fail as a Product Owner
Until you learn how to say no at least 10x a day, you will achieve mediocre results.medium.com
Apply FOCUS to set great Sprint Goals
Setting a good Sprint Goal is challenging and important. How do you nail Sprint Goals?medium.com
Why Most Roadmaps Make Poor Results Inevitable
Three common mistakes with roadmaps lead teams to failuremedium.com
Problem solver mindset
First comes the problem, then the solution. Anything different than that will lead you to mediocre results. Most people come to the Product Owner with solutions to implement. They generally forget to clarify what is the problem they want to solve.
A great Product Owner must be able to identify the problem underneath the solution. Focusing on solutions, we may end up solving a nonexistent problem, resulting in a product nobody needs.
We should empathize with our customers and understand their problems. The challenge is to change the course of most of the discussions from Solutions to Problems. Be relentless. Don’t give up until you uncover the hidden problem.
It is also demotivating for development teams to work on solutions without understanding the problem they are solving. That’s why we have to answer the question, “After the customers use our product, which problem is solved?”
If you want to become a problem-solver, here are some recommendations:
Great Product Owners Set Goals to Achieve Instead of Features to Deliver
Focusing on features leads to the wrong discussion. But, “what should we achieve” leads to the right conversation…medium.com
Do You Have The Mindset Of A Problem Solver?
This is the essence of business.medium.com
Help! I’m working in a Feature Factory, what should I do?
Stop talking about the solution, make people care about the underlying problemmedium.com
Results evaluation
The worst misunderstanding of Product Owners is to think we are paid to build features. Our job is to change the world. The work of a Product Owner doesn’t finish when the release is done. Our work ends once the expected outcome is achieved. Therefore, we have to measure the impact.
Don’t fall into the pitfall of being a feature-driven Product Owner. Instead, strive to be a value maximizer.
How can we avoid this trap? First, we should define the outcome we want to achieve. Then, we can use the desired outcome as a North Star to guide the team. Once we release new features, we need to measure the results and understand the generated impact.
“Start with the end in mind. ”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
To define the goals to achieve, we should be as precise as possible. That’s why we should avoid unclear words. The expected results must be measurable.
Don’t use words that are not measurable, e.g., improvement, fast, slow, good, great.
We should define measurable goals, e.g., increase the monthly active users 20% by the end of December 2020.
The whole story is, we should know how to measure the outcome and evaluate if we are on track or not. Then, we can make the required decisions based on our learnings.
To learn how to measure what matters, I have some recommended follow-up for you:
What is product vision?
A clear product vision helps making decisions so your product ends up where you want it to be.productcoalition.com
How To Measure What Matters, Not What Is Measurable
Measuring what matters is where improvement comes from.medium.com
Where is the beginning and the end of the Product Owner’s responsibilities?
The role of the Product Owner requires numerous activities during the cycle of a product or a service. The Product…uxdesign.cc
Continuous learning
Being a Product Owner is an endless challenge. Therefore, we should always be eager to learn. We should be curious about:
Our customers’ problems
Our customers’ behavior
What our customers need
What our competitors are doing
What the newcomers in the market are doing
Tools for product management
Product trends
What the market misses
How to become a better version of myself
Curiosity spurs action, knowledge kills it
Successful Product Owners strive to live far from their comfort zone. If we want to be stand out, we should be unstoppable when it comes to learning.
Learning is fascinating. I’ve got some more recommendations for you:
The 10 books that transformed my mindset as a Product Owner
Learning is so fascinating that the more I learn, the more I want to develop myself; this is an endless magic journey.medium.com
5-Hour Rule: If you’re not spending 5 hours per week learning, you’re being irresponsible
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none…medium.com
Focus On Learning and Creating Rather Than Entertainment and Distraction
“Ordinary people seek entertainment. Extraordinary people seek education and learning.” -Benjamin Hardymedium.com
Endnote
Being a Product Owner is a daunting challenge. But it is rewarding to change peoples lives for better. If you want to succeed in this role, you should be aware of what it takes, what skills you should bring.
I wish I knew what I am sharing with you when I started this adventure eight years ago. I hope that what I shared helps you to avoid some pitfalls I fell into.
To be a Product Owner, we first need to improve our skill-set. Once we sharpen our mindset, we can stand out in the role of the Product Owner.
Ensure you understand the nuances of communication.
Be bold to make decisions based on your guts.
Focus on what matters by saying NO to distractions.
Until you understand the problem, don’t talk about solutions.
Understand the difference between outcome and output.
Be curious. Never stop learning.
Do you want to write for Serious Scrum or seriously discuss Scrum?