How to become a better Product Owner
The Product Onwer occupation requires having a vision, perception, and decision-making that differentiates this profession from others in the market. It is the product owner that decides what should happen in the construction of any product, and is also responsible for any eventual failure that will occur.
Check out in this article some topics to understand how to become a better product owner and create excellent products that can impact people's lives and solve problems that hitherto hinder consumers' lives.
Theory X Practice
There is a considerable difference between theory and practice, knowledge is the beginning of transforming yourself in the future into an excellent Product Owner. In real life, it will be the practice acquired over time that will improve your skills, promoting better decision-making.
Don't create an imaginary situation of being the best with little time in the profession, experience is more valuable because it is the refinement of knowledge, and skills and increases the success rate.
Product Backlog Refinement
The Product Backlog always needs to be refined, prioritizing what is really important to your company's consumers The definition of important can change over the course of development and improvement of the product to be released, keep in mind that a strong backlog is what is constantly changing without changing the main purpose.
And even the main goal can be changed in some cases, depending on the situation.
Define a vision
You should have a view of the overall product as well as your current release cycle. This vision should be what unites your entire team to strive and work focused on a single goal that contains challenges. All this will keep your team together and motivated to continue to always deliver the best possible result.
Best Practices to Build a Successful product roadmap online
If you don't have this well-defined and clear vision in your mind, problems such as disagreements and also lack of motivation can arise. Without an objective vision, what is putting your entire team in focus?
One team
Do you want to be the best Product Owner? So forget the word “I” and “they”. This division does not exist in an excluding way, everyone is working together, for the same objective and with the same shared motivations.
“You” is an entire team together with the Dev Team and Scrum Master, in the end, everyone has a duty to deliver the same thing, and the final product is the set of productivity of all involved.
Story Mapping
Building a Product Roadmap to prioritize and understand what is happening with the product is a great tool to facilitate and make the whole process more accurate and dynamic.
Through this tool, you can easily visualize what makes sense to continue in the product creation project, and what can be discarded. The reasons for changes can range from cutting money, reducing the time that makes it impossible to insert everything that was initially planned in the project, and the departure of an important member of the team that could delay the end of the project, among many other reasons.
We recommend you to use Changelogfy's Product Roadmap!
Be an expert in the field of your product
Being an expert when it comes to your product is a requirement, if you are not a reference in knowledge, you will not have everything you need to launch an excellent product that will be a hit with the public.
Get to know the properties your product needs to have, and what functions they have that are perceived as necessary by your audience. Understand how your product will solve these problems, at each step of the process.
How the product is positioned in the market, for whom it is indicated, and when it will make a difference. And who your audience is, how your target audience behaves and what they demand from what is being created by your entire team.
Also, consider if your product has a reasonable shelf life if it will take a year for your product to be finalized and released to the market, will consumers still need it and may be willing to pay for it after that time? Find out what its technical limitations are.
Read blogs and websites, watch videos on the internet, and read reviews from people who are considered to be your potential customers.
Keep Stakeholders updated
Here you can use a public roadmap to make it a reality. Keeping everyone involved up to date on product development, whether it's in the process of being finalized or a product with ongoing development, improves the chances of making better decisions.
Knowing what consumers think about the product being developed by you and your team eliminates several problems such as wasting time and money on building unwanted features and items that are never used by any user.
It also contributes to improving the relationship between business and people, showing honesty, and transparency, and that the company cares about the opinion of those who intend to buy the product, engaging them to continue following its future launches.
Remove useless features
Don't be afraid to remove features that will be useless from a consumer's point of view or that require spending money and time that your team doesn't have available.
Building a successful product also requires polishing, that is, removing what is unfeasible or makes no sense to exist, both from the perception of your team and the perception of your consumers.
The boss: The customer
Never forget: your boss is not the one above you in the company hierarchy, your boss is the final consumer, who will buy your product. Consumers pay for the company to exist, and they are the ones who must be satisfied, without them, there is no company, and without a company, there is no position for you to be an excellent Product Owner.