“At the heart of every product person, there’s a desire to make someone’s life easier or simpler. If we listen to the customer and give them what they need, they’ll reciprocate with love and loyalty to your brand.” – Francis Brown, Product Development Manager at Alaska Airlines
As a product owner, when we engage with the team, we have to do lot of homework, so that we can start contributing to the moment we start the engagement.
Without doing proper homework, it will be a waste of everyone’s time.
All the assumptions need to be validated during the initial discussion.
Some of my homework patterns. I have shared here.
When we start a new assignment, let us look into these aspects and see where a team stands and then help teams to increase the maturity against all these areas.
The motto should be to develop great software by applying agile ways of working.
A Product Owner can transform a team by transforming their way of thinking, doing, and unlearning the old way of operating.
How can a Product Owner enables?
Good observation skill, structured feedback, mentor and support to the team members.
Product Owners have to be optimistic and should have the characteristics of a perfect leader (walk the talk).
Let us have a look at how an Product Owner should start...
- What is the business or context the team is operating? How well the product vision written? How many team members? At what experience level? Let us understand the business complexity. It will help us to proceed considering the business. E.g., are we working on banking application development, developing any mission-critical software which will be used in the healthcare domain, or some gaming application product, etc.?
“When customers love your product, they become ambassadors. There’s nothing better than someone using your app everyday and trying to get their friends and family to do the same.” – Tom Padula
- What are the current practices followed by the team and what are the ways we can optimize the working practices? Optimizing the work will help you to know the Value flow and identify the waste in the value stream process. All these exercises will help us to take any initiative that is valid for the team. Adaptability and fitment to the team will be higher if we consider all these factors
- When we have understood the flow and analyzing the current operating model we can simplify the workflow and explain to the team members the benefits of new ways of working, couple of iterations the will experiment with the new way of working and improve wherever required, which will become a standard process for the team for their need.
- In this discovery path, the team will solve this new initiative together, which will help the team to increase bonding among themselves and they will become self-organized over a period.The product owner needs to constantly pour water into the plant so that this outcome comes out!
- As a part of product Development, the product owner needs to identify how this new process brings technical excellence as a part of the deliverable. There are several software practices that can be initiated that can enable technical excellence in product development. Good design practices are an incremental way that can enable teams to grow and develop a superb product.
- As a part of Product development, the Product Owner needs to see how we can sustain any initiative team has taken to improve the current situation. As people’s involvement is very high, the Product Owner needs to always help the team members to grow and build process around people. Need to empower team members to decide and see how any initiative if it fails, should also result in learning.
- People development is an ongoing agenda which Product Owner should always keep on his/her work list. Deploy best practices available in the industry and improve the people and their competency. Check with the line organization what can be done to address the team member's grumbles.
- Product Owner needs to demonstrate to all the stakeholders how team members are turning into better and better. There should be some mechanism to collect data which shows this evidence. It could be a demo or a deliverable, which the end user appreciates. There should not be too many overhead metrics which demotivate team members.
- The Product Owner needs to support the team members, the way meetings have been conducted, the workshop has been conducted, communication is happening with the stakeholders. How can we maximize the output if there is any gap?
- The Product Owner needs to help create an environment where team members are willing to contribute, share, and care with others. A place everyone would like to be a part of. This will take some time to build such a cultural transformation. The goal is to create an environment where everybody cares for each other, respects each other, is willing to experiment and fail and learn from the same. No blame whenever an incident happens. Encourage positive ways of looking at the event.
- Avoid any type of command-and-control symptoms. Except for the team, no one decides. The team decides and we trust the team members. No manager should tell the team what to do and how to do it. No manager should micromanage any situation.
- Product Owner should focus on collaboration, How efficiently teams are collaborating with each other. help them to do this exercise more efficiently. This will result in an efficient execution process.
- Create a culture for collaboration. Encourages team members to be more extroverted and to communicate proactively in a non-judgmental environment.
- The product owner needs to ensure frequent deliverables from the team which can be consumed by the end-user. In this process, learning will be fast, and the discovery of the unknown will be fast. Tools and infrastructure have to enable execution speed and faster frequent delivery.
- Ensuring that the team keeps its focus on producing a potentially consumable solution for each iteration to the end-user. Every certain interval the team captures end-user satisfaction by discussing it with them.
“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Garrett Hoffman
- The team assesses the value delivery process, if there are gaps, the team works to ensure efficient delivery process. Let the team build a culture of asking 5 WHY questions so that they validate every assumption.
- Encourage the storytelling culture where each team shares the best practices. Product Owner helps to builds the community of best practitioners. Involve other related departments like HR, supply chain, training, etc. to be part of the agile story so that they also start changing.
- There will always be some resistance from the team members regarding the new initiatives, the product owner has to experiment with a different approach to get the buy-in from the team members. Product owner can propose like we have a common problem and ask help from team members. The new idea will come and the Product owner can agree with the team and implement it to solve the problem.
- Product Owner has to create a space for himself/herself in the organization/industry by sharing best practices and contributing to the community by writing blogs/books etc. Inspire & attract the talents.
- Build a designation less world where everyone contributes. No hierarchy and flat structure. Encourage such mindset to flourish!
- Spend time with end users. Understand their world. Bridge the knowledge gaps with customers and team!
“ So while the complexities change, the work of coaching stays the same, keep your clients at the center of the work, push them to use their strengths more and to temper their weaknesses, and illuminate blind spots because these are what really gets in the way” —Stacy Feiner
Transformation is a journey for the team, it cannot happen in a month.
The product owner should have the belief, trust, and patience to see the changes happening.
Senior management involvement and encouragement catalyze the transformation process. These are some thoughts which can help a product owner to start the journey.
“At the end of the day, your job isn’t to get the requirements right — your job is to change the world.” – Jeff Patton
Please validate if you as a product owner doing all these? More than this? What is missing?
