Author name: omarabela

In This Article #1. This isn’t your job, stop worrying about it! #2. Feature Requisites, A Break or Make! #3. Understand The Customer #4. Define Clear Product Vision And Strategy #5. Collaborate Effectively #6. Prioritise Ruthlessly #7. Embrace Agility #8. Communicate Effectively #9. Measure Success #10. Be A Problem Solver As we may well know by now, the product owner role is an emerging job post that has found its roots in the grounds of Agile, a methodology that is set to improve the efficiency and quality of organisations through the Agile Manifesto. Some of you may confuse the role with that of a scrum master role or even a project manager… what the heck! Some of you may even have never heard of it, but the role of a product owner is an essential part of organisational processes and focuses on specific targets. Let’s take a quick peak at these targets one by one! #1. This isn’t your job, stop worrying about it! When joining a company as a product owner, it’s easy to slip into the common mistake of thinking that you are asked to take a managerial role for the product you are supposed to run, but managing processes is a whole different beast which requires another full time role like a Product manager, technical lead (techlead) or a scrum master, depending on the requirement. If you were to slip into such mistake, you will probably be of no good to the company or your success in the role. First things you need to learn? Is what am I expected to achieve in the product owner role? There are three tips that I can give you in order for you to nail the answer to this question, and here they go. You’re The Interviewer The company you are to work for is not merely interested in how you will do with answering the interviewer’s questions, they’re interested in analysing the questions you have prepared for them too. Let’s say it right away, the fact that you prepare questions for your interview is already a big plus for you, as many, barely have any questions to ask and the few that do, have only questions which the companies are used to hear: What benefits you offer? how much is the salary? etc… But the questions you ask will not just determine your success in the interview, they will also define your success or failure in the role going along, depending on what you ask. There are many questions one may ask to unveil the path to success in a role. However, one particular question that does just that is to ask for two or three main goals one should achieve in order to be successful in the role as perceived by the company/interviewer. Asking what the key goals are would potentially give you a path of work prior the first day at work. And while you are at it, why not ask the 3 things that led to failure in the previous role. This will give you 3 things to shift away from when starting your job. Understand The Quality Of The Role There really isn’t a one size fits all description of the role and responsibility of a product owner. Companies may hire you for a role of a technical, financial, CRM or even marketing product owner. Indeed they do fall under the cap of product ownership, but they bring along their own set of responsibilities and day to day tasks. What better way to excel in a product owner role then knowing that your managers want you to handle the CRM part and not focus on the technical part. Although product ownership comes in colours, we do find a common understanding of what a product owner should aim for. The explanation goes deep, however we summarise this in one quote. A product owner is there to leverage the value of the end product, they do so by focusing on the validity and timeliness of the input and output in the software development lifecycle #2. Feature Requisites, A Break or Make! Wether its a top-down or a bottom-up feature request, you need to properly document it to make sure you leave no stones unturned and no holes. Let’s face it documentation is a struggle in all modern agile teams. Tools like JIRA help every actor in the feature delivery cycle document just enough to for handshaking and engine starting. Hand Shaking With complete task reporting, the product owner is able to communicate and agree both with stakeholder and developers that the priority is desired and actionable. This in turn becomes a bullet proof ritual that the product owner practices to ensure correctness, workflow and most importantly continuity. Engine Starting Properly requesting a feature will get the software development life cycle engine to start. Scrum teams will either be able to fully understand it or ask the right questions. An incomplete feature request will lead to scrum team members to go back and forth for clarification and information needed in order to turn the task into a technical requirement, or not action it at all, leaving it to the PO to come back and prioritise it instead of doing their job for them. How Do You Request A Feature? Well, let’s take a quick look back. We said that the product owner needs to perform two important tasks in order for their feature request to be a success. Handshaking with all relevant stakeholders, and engine starting for the scrum team. There are several tools at hand that a product owner can use to deliver feature requisites. Here are some of the strategies that I would use in different scenarios. One Requester, One Stakeholder Scenario This is what I like to call a domestic feature requisite. In these scenarios, the requester is usually also the stakeholder themselves. Whenever this is the case, keeping it simple is the best way around. As we have the advantage of having all