The Real Job of a Product Owner: More Than Just Scrum
This blog is for people who are new or plan to start their career as PO. In this post, I will share my experience which no one shared with me when I started my career.
The Scrum Illusion
Most of the people who want to be product owners mainly focus on learning only about agile especially scrum. As a product owner, it is great to know what is scrum, why it is valuable, and how to get value from it but we have to stop at one point. By saying stop, I do not mean ignore it, just change your focus to the more important things.
The Commercial Heart of a PO
If you plan to be a product owner, you have to be able to commercial person. Your core responsibility is to create value and earn from it. Always remind yourself that you are not a scrum master/agile coach. As I mentioned before, it is great to know how to be agile and act as an agile person who lives that mindset but our main job is not to promote scrum for our product team. Instead, dive deep into business understanding — product metrics, commercial, marketing, legal aspects, and the wider context of your product. Remember, We often say, the PO is Mini CEO but we have to implement this idea to the reality.
Scrum Enthusiast ≠ Product Owner: If you find yourself deeply invested in Agile and Scrum methodologies, you might be leaning more towards a Scrum Master role. In other words, if you live with agile and scrum, only talking about the good process of scrum, you are a good scrum master.
Business Analyst Skills Are Just the Start: While writing user stories, analyzing business processes, and conducting testing, etc are essential skills, they represent just a part of the multifaceted responsibilities of a Product Owner. You need to balance these with a comprehensive understanding of every aspect of your product.
The Ideal PO: If you are an agile person, have good BA skills for development, and know your product commercial, legal, marketing, PR and other sides. Being aware of all problems from every angle and knowing how to solve them or whom to address for solutions. Also, if you can simplify complex concepts for a non-specialist audience like any taxi driver; for me you are an amazing product owner.
The Journey of Learning
It’s important to realize that you won’t master all these facets at the outset. Skill and knowledge accumulation is a gradual process. In the beginning, you will not be able to learn all sides of these, you will learn it with time. This blog aims to call you to focus on these as soon as possible. Delegate the complexities of Scrum to your Scrum Master and focus on excelling in your primary PO responsibilities.
Do not forget!
Being a Product Owner is all about constantly learning and adapting. Embrace this journey, and you’ll not only thrive in your role but also greatly contribute to the success of your products and your team.
