Product Management Part 3: Applying the Product Mindset
You don’t have to be in product or have product in your job title to have a product mindset. While my previous articles in this series point out the key factors that make a successful product owner, you can apply that same approach to any job.
Stakeholders
You may not get a list of stakeholders, but you should always know who they are. Who are the people, teams or users that may be impacted or may benefit from what you are working on? Most work isn’t done in a silo, so you are likely to have more than one stakeholder. Who you may be presenting your work to? Who may be affected positively or negatively by your work? Make sure to include all those people and teams in your own stakeholder list, and think about them as your audience for your work. What do they want to hear? What should they know?
Design
You may not have a dedicated designer to your project or work, but the visual is a key aspect of communication. Think about how your work should look, so that the stakeholders can easily consume what you are trying to show them.
Experience
You may not have done one job your whole life, and that is a good thing. You learn as you go, and you can understand different aspects of a business with a variety of experience. You can use that experience to better anticipate stakeholder needs if you’ve been in their shoes before or worked with that team in a different capacity. This ensures you aren’t just coming to your work from the same monotone angle, you can think about it from different perspectives.
Details
You may not need to write user stories, but it is valuable to be able to break down a large effort into smaller tasks. Think about what your Epics are or your big projects, and try to chunk it out into smaller pieces. This will allow you to see what you can start or tackle simultaneously and have a better plan to accomplish your work. Many times, people get lost in the big picture and skip over the details. They don’t say the devil is in the details for nothing. Make sure you don’t miss a thing by identifying the small pieces that make up the work.
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Questions
You may not have an agile ceremony to ask questions in, but asking good questions is key in learning, understanding, and uncovering the necessarily details of your work. The same questions a product owner may ask, still apply to any job:
What is the impact of getting this done?
Who does this impact?
Who is the user/customer?
How will this change the current experience?
Who will share/implement the change when it’s done?
Who needs to do the work?
How do I know the work is done?
You may not be in product yet or at all, but you can still adopt and apply a product minded approach to focus on the right things, for the right impact, in the right way.
If you haven't already, read my first two articles in this three-part series for the full picture: