Why integrate the vision of the Product Owner in your company?

Introduction.

The Product Owner is responsible for co-creating a vision, encompassing 3 ideals: who are the customers, what problem are we going to solve and what are the key benefits of the product. Provides vision, focus, and planned execution, in terms of quality and delivery, in accordance with established expectations. Next, we will review 3 impact reasons why you need the powerful vision of the PO in your company, or even become one!

Focus.

These 21st-century professionals are required to co-create the product vision. While vision is what defines where we are going, the vision co-creation process is a collaborative activity that can change throughout the life of the product. This is how the comprehensive vision of the Product Owner can collectively manage, coordinate, and align your company to drive the success of the product.

Client? Product Owner? PO? Yes, they are all the same. This unique position is often confused with that of the Product Manager (from the previous article that you just read) when in reality the Product Owner is known as the "customer speaker" since he must not only understand the requirements of the company but also of the users.

But there is more. Not only is it the transmitter of demands and feedback, it should also be considered the "eyes of the customer", because it transforms ideas into tangible products. Let's keep finding out more in this article, not without first putting you to the test (you know I love testing).

Let's go back and review the Scrum Team. To carry out this Agile methodology , you need working groups of between 3 to 9 more members ... Do you remember the 2 most important roles? The Scrum Master and the Product Owner! Although these positions are the most sought-after on LinkedIn, the PO is more important because it is responsible for the success of product development.

Each Scrum Team needs a defined vision for its product, as well as a strategy, characteristics, and order of tasks to be fulfilled. If a Scrum Team does not have a Product Owner, it will not be possible to follow the proper guidelines or workflow for the development of the product, and some of these problems may occur:

? Delays arise with the final deliverable to the client

? Costs soar beyond budget

? There are flaws in the presentation and quality of the product

? Lack of immediate reaction capacity against the competition

? Even the morale of the work team is very low

To prevent these and other problems today, these 21st-century professionals are required to co-create the product vision. While vision is what defines where we are going, the vision co-creation process is a collaborative activity that can change throughout the life cycle of the product.

The Product Owner is responsible for co-creating a vision, encompassing 3 ideals: who are the customers, what problem are we going to solve and what are the key benefits of the product. Next, we will review 3 impact reasons why you need the powerful vision of the PO in your company, or even become one!

1. The Product Owner maximizes the value of a solution

Scrum focuses on the Product Owner as the representative of the business, who has all the information and manages it through the Product Ownership. With each Sprint within this process, the PO makes an investment in development that has to produce value. Thus, every time it marks the Sprint Goal with the team, it makes the product constantly increase in value.

Some of the tasks performed in Product Ownership:

? Manage the budget and financial resources to start the Project

? Analyze the feasibility of the project with the development team

? Develop criteria for accepting user stories (User Stories)

? Guarantee the delivery of the product on time

? Approve or deny deliverables

The Product Owner's objective is to ensure that the “correct” product is delivered, that is, the product that the market and stakeholders want. It must close that technical and commercial gap, for which it will have great responsibilities such as:

? Ordering the Product Backlog

? Managing the expectations of all those involved, especially stakeholders

? Managing product strategies with the development team

? Supervising the creation of MVPs, reducing expenses, and increasing learning

? Ensuring continuous improvement after each retrospective meeting

2. The Product Owner is operation oriented

Of the previous points, the most relevant is the product stack or Product Backlog. This tool allows prioritizing and evaluating all the elements of the project, so the PO manages to accommodate the following:

? It must project the vision of the product and the planning (Sprint planning) of the roadmap or product roadmap

? It must formulate the elements in a visible and transparent way for both stakeholders and the team

? It must be clearly stated and detailed enough to be understood by all

? It must optimize the value of the work done by the development team

? Must be ordered in a way that maximizes the value of the product created by the team

? It should review the next tasks to be done (Sprint review)

When I talk about "prioritizing", I mean that each Product Backlog Item (PBI) goes through the known "Pareto Rule", where the Product Owner seeks to find the 20% of product characteristics that contribute 80% of the value, this is not done by just anyone.

Other simple strategies that are used are that of "Bubbling" (it works by comparing each GDP with the rest), even more complex, such as "NPV cash flows (Net Present Value)", which will depend on the context and criteria of the Product Owner.

And when I refer to the "value" of the product, I am considering not only the market value that it brings to users but also the learning value (how much the team can learn in the process and thus reduce risks) and the value skills development (what skills can the team learn and adopt in the process).

3. The Product Owner understands the needs of users and business

The Product Owner has the highest level of ownership over the product. It represents stakeholders, so it must understand and support the needs of all users in the business, as well as the needs and functioning of the Scrum Team (that's why they call it the “speaker”).

Similarly, the profiles that best fit this role are people responsible for the end of the product (or service) such as Product Managers, managers of development teams, business developers, among others.

Other profiles that can be:

? A primary user of the system

? A marketing or product management representative

? Someone with a solid understanding of users, competition, and future trends for the type of system being developed

The nature of a PO falls into 4 aspects:

1. Innovation. It makes it easy for you to imagine the product you want to build for the customer. This quality together with your knowledge of business and market conditions will help you to weigh risks and create opportunities.

2. Competitiveness. This quality is divided into two: the PO is competent enough to deliver the most valuable functionalities, as well as having the eyes and ears to detect opportunities and make quick decisions in a market where new products are constantly being launched.

3. Flexibility. More than 65% of the characteristics of a product are never used, so having a flexible mindset is very important to keep the business strategy aligned around the product and coordinate the different dimensions of the project as its development progresses.

4. Productivity . His dedication and dedication to the development team keeps him always available. In general, he has tasks that are not really related to Scrum, so he is able to find a balance between these tasks and his own responsibilities.

Conclusion

A Product Owner is indispensable for Scrum teams. Provides vision, focus, and planned execution, in terms of quality and delivery, in accordance with established expectations.

If after learning about it you feel with the skills, experience, and interest in knowing more about management with Product Ownership, this may be the professional opportunity you were looking for.

Not only can it teach you to see behind the scenes the development of the products that are being developed in your company, but it will also reinforce your sense of leadership and, eventually, you will evolve towards agile work schemes.

The success of an Agile transformation is related to having good Product Owners since they are the ones indicated to generate value hypotheses in short times, as well as being potential ambassadors of change at a social level (when living with customers) and hierarchical (being a link between the persons of interest and the R&D, sales, marketing team ...).For this reason, a good selection of Product Owners (and a special effort in their Product / Client certification) is essential for a successful agile transformation start that can, in the future, contribute results to the company in a more agile way.

Since more than 90% of companies in the technological field use Scrum, the Scrum Alliance demonstrates the importance of Product Owners as follows:

? 38% of Product Owners act as intermediaries and are responsible for maintaining relationships with stakeholders

? 24% of Product Owners establish the commercial priorities of the project and work directly with clients

? 15% of the Product Owner works directly with the Scrum Team

If your company is creating or selling a new product, then you will need a PO to lead your product development team and help them manage technical aspects, generate innovative ideas, and bring these concepts to life.

This is how the comprehensive vision of the Product Owner can collectively manage, coordinate, and align your company to drive the success of the prod

About this article.

We want the reader to become involved in the correct terminology, scope, and characteristics of the Product Owner role. At the same time, that they have a small taste of everything that the DTSWE Certification will have to offer, as that guarantees the role with greater credibility, but also that to those who are interested it can open future professional doors in VUCA environments that are being highly present today.

Caro Salazar / Design Thinking Sweden AB