Product Owner Mistakes You Have to Avoid
As the Product Owner, it is your job to make sure that the development team is on track. You have to ensure that the product is the best that it can be. And that it includes features that people want and need. The Product Owner also acts as a bridge between the dev team and the stakeholders.
So it’s not an easy job, but you don’t have to make life harder for yourself, either. Here’s a list of common Product Owner mistakes that you have to avoid.
1. Lack of Vision
As mentioned, one of the main goals of the Product Owner is helping the product become the best it can be. You need to be able to se say ‘this is how the product needs to work and here’s who we’re making it for’. So it goes without saying that a lack of vision is a serious Product Owner mistake.
Your vision of the product can provide the team with a solid framework. If you have an end goal in mind, you can build around it, creating features accordingly. Without that, they may spend time on things that don’t matter. This will to wasted resources.
To avoid this kind of Product Owner mistakes, outline your vision before development, and be sure of it. Write it down if you have to. That way you can refer to it in future.
2. Poor Communication
Another serious one of Product Owner mistakes is that they don’t speak to their team enough. Everyone understands that Product Owners are busy but that’s no excuse for falling off the grid.
Your teammates will have questions that needing answers. Questions that can only be answered by you. If you do not help them, things may go wrong or development may be stalled. It is vital that you schedule time (a few hours or so) every day to address these queries.
3. Ignoring the Backlog
This one is one of the worst Product Owner mistakes there can be. In Agile software development, every project has a backlog. The backlog is maintained by the Product Owner. It outlines which features are necessary, which ones are priorities and which ones can be completed in the future. The backlog is important and should not be ignored.
If you ignore the backlog then you may as well not have one at all. It’s there to guide your team through development. To let them know what they should be doing and what’s important. As is the case with a lack of vision, ignoring the backlog can lead to wasted time and money.
4. Controlling Your Team
You are the person responsible for the product and there’s a lot of pressure on you. If something goes wrong you will have to take the blame in front of the stakeholders etc. But it shouldn’t cloud your vision in the Scrum process. The Scrum team will organize itself and you need to trust them.
They have the technical knowledge that will make the day-to-day planning most efficient. They know what dependencies have to be considered. They also know what are the strenghts and weaknesses of each one of them better than you will ever do.
Focus on keeping a clean, well prioritized backlog and on feedbacking. Controlling development aspects will lead to having a frustrated team. Let them help you in avoiding at least one of the Product Owner mistakes!
5. Being Too Serious
You are the person that your teammates look to for guidance, help, and answers. If you are constantly serious and/or act like an overlord, team morale will be low. And you won’t have all the respect that you could from your team.
Be fun and joke every once in a while. It’s none of the Product Owner mistakes. It’s a trait of the best Product Owners. There are times when you need to be serious, of course. But everyone works better around people with a sense of humour. Including you and your team.
Try not letting the above Product Owner mistakes happen to you and the whole Scrum process will be much much easier. Here’s more about the basics of the whole process if you need more information.
