The role of the product owner
We often look at the role of product owner from a rather limited perspective. After all, isn't the PO the one who listens to what the business wants, translates that into user stories and then puts those stories on the backlog in order of priority?
As any product owner knows, who has ever brought an innovative product to the market “from scratch”, PO's role is much broader. Because underneath the picture we outline above, there are 2 assumptions.
- We have enough internal knowledge to determine the priority of a feature. At the beginning of a project, you usually have nothing more than an idea and a rough business case. Much of this is still based on assumptions and there are many risks in those assumptions, so you can dive into the backlog and get to work with the features you need thinks that they are the most important, you can be quite (and expensively) wrong.
- Rapidly iterating on the product will give us the market knowledge we need. This is the idea with which many organizations are working with Scrum or other agile methods. But in practice, it is almost never possible to really roll out new features to real users every 2 weeks, so as an organization, you learn too slowly if you only rely on usage data.
As a product owner, in addition to managing the development team, you therefore have the task of becoming the strategist who shapes the vision of the product and to validate that vision in the market.
Discussion about changes
A software project always involves changes in scope and vision. Changes you agree with and changes you disagree with. Plus the associated discussions. In order not to get carried away in endless debates, it is important to also look at any change in the scope or vision of the project in the context of your own product and market vision and from the perspective of protecting the investment.
Because in that vision, in your strategic view and in the data you collect about the market and customer, the answer usually already lies. And if you can substantiate your vision with sufficient real market knowledge, he has enough weight to quickly make a choice that all stakeholders can support.
What do you actually know about your market?
Unless you work in a field where you already have a lot of experience, you probably don't know enough about your market to express and substantiate such a vision clearly enough. To reinforce your opinion about the development direction of your product, you therefore need domain and market knowledge very quickly. And you need cheaper, faster ways to learn than developing and launching features or an MVP.? Is it user-friendly? We also do this type of research during and after construction to further optimize the product and discover what the next valuable step is. The essence of this type of research is that, where possible, you talk directly to the market: 'get out of the building', we call that. Out of your office, out into the outside world.
It doesn't have to be complicated
That may sound complicated, expensive and time-consuming, but it is not. To get a quick picture of the market, you can, for example, very quickly listening posts furnish. These are smartly chosen information channels that provide you with information about the market, often (almost) free of charge. This includes competition activities, trend reports, customer interviews, social media and data from previous projects. This flow of information gives you a basic idea of what your market looks like.
In addition, dive in usage data, set up surveys and analyse customer complaints. Conduct your own interviews, make “paper prototypes” and drawings, set up polls and questionnaires, and ask online communities for feedback on ideas. Finally, test your proposition directly with your target group through experiments or invite people from your target group to come up with ideas together in co-creation.
If you see trends and patterns, try to reason how they affect your different epics. Bring this data and your analysis of it together to empower your story to all stakeholders. As you probably know from practice, there is always tension between strategic business interests and what users want. Balancing what the market wants and what your CEO, client or investor wants is therefore part of your daily work.
Check out our white paper
Want to read more about our vision of the role of the PO? And do you want our 4 golden tips for delivering successful projects as a product owner and working on your own status in the organization? Then read our white paper: Why you don't want to become a product owner (and 4 things to do if you're already a PO and want to deliver successful innovations)
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