PO traits

In meeting several wannabe agile enthusiasts and folks transitioning from waterfall to agile methodology, I realized that a blog post might be helpful for you to understand the traits of a product owner better. You might already be doing some pieces of it. These might be handy for you while applying for PO jobs.

The scrum guide describes the top responsibilities of a PO as below -         

• Clearly expressing Product Backlog items
• Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;
• Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;
• Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and
• Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.

I would like to dive deeper into this from my personal experience. This might help you transition better into the role. -

Backlog management

•  Requirements come from multiple areas; typically from business stakeholders, regulatory, technology upgrades.
• This might sound trivial but is very important. You could get requests via email, chat or meetings. You need to ensure that these get listed in your tool eg: JIRA, TFS etc. so that they don’t fall thru the cracks. If you are organized then this is going to be very helpful.
• Constantly interacting with your stakeholders is key. In your previous roles if you have been interacting with stakeholders then you certainly have one of the important PO skill sets.
• You don’t get requirements cut and dry from the different stakeholders. You have to analyze these and get it to a stage where the team can implement them. You might have to factor in technical factors too and rope in your technical lead or developer to get closure on the final set of requirements. In your previous role, if you were a business/system analyst, then you are perfectly positioned to be product owner.
• Technology upgrades and constantly addressing tech debt is the enabler to faster delivery. This is also a backlog item and the skill is to schedule these items at the right time. In some companies, this is a concept that is understood by business but in others, you have to have a conversation with your business. You are not expected to code but you need to work with your technical lead closely to understand the impact to your product.

Decision making & Stakeholder management

• A well-rounded experience definitely helps you to become a better PO. This is because you can talk to business and technical stakeholders and clearly understand what they mean. So, if you have experience on the business and technical side then that is a huge plus. It helps you connect the dots between business and technical requirements.
• What separates you from all the other roles such as a business analyst/tech lead etc. is the fact you get to decide what the team works on next. You are the one person committee that decides what the most valuable thing is to work on.
• You see the whole picture for your product – Feasibility of implementing each of the projects and the value of each of them determines the order in which you do things. In the past, your inputs could have been crucial to the different decisions made in the project. This is also a trait of a product owner.
• This means that you need to negotiate with the different stakeholders on the delivery dates of their requirements.
• Training users with your product – You are the 1^st point of contact for the product.
• Status reporting to all stakeholders – Many of the times the stakeholders are interested in only their requests and so timely status reporting brings transparency to everyone.

Your team is the biggest asset!

This is a common trait along with the scrum master. As a PO, you have to extract the most value from your team. Talking to your team opens many ideas and helps build their trust with you. It helps to make decisions that the team will support and ultimately a win-win situation. You need to be team-person and if you are not a team person then you might want to rethink your role. (Nothing wrong with that !!)

Hope this helps you plan your foray into being a product owner.