Why is important to form a strong partnership among product? (Part 1/2)
Opening words- Why we even discuss this?
Thanks to the invitation from IIBA, I got an opportunity to share my perspectives for the partnership among different product roles of Business Analyst, Product Owner and Product Manager.
It’s absolutely flattering to know, we have almost 300 registrations for this single event with very minimal marketing efforts.That shows how much interest there is with this particular topic across the industry.
Why this topic is so hot you might ask?
I believer there is something to do with this blog of the product management guru from silicon valley— Marty Cagan. He not only revisited his previous view on Product Manager equal to Product Owner, but also pointed out the skills gap between these 2 roles is not sufficient to close through a CSPO certification/training.
This blog triggered series of conversations in the product community throughout social media platforms. Then how does Business Analyst also in the middle of this discussion?
The role of Business Analyst has evolved from System Analyst under IT to help “Business” learn about the systems (around 1980s) to focusing on solving “business problem” (2000s) until today become a default candidates for current/future “Product Owner”. (more history for Business Analyst see here)
As an ex-business analyst, product owner and current product manager, I decide to share my personal experiences and perspectives on this topic.
I split it to 2 blogs for a better reading experience:
The 1st one focuses on the Why — is important to form a strong partnership among these product roles.
The 2nd one focuses on the How-to form the partnership that last. I will also include some of the unanswered questions from the audience at the end of the 2nd blog.
Let’s begin on the roles
I don’t know if you have ever tried to put a Job Descriptions for a Business Analyst, Product Manager and Product Owner together. During the IIBA event, I ran this activity with the audiences: I put 5 current job descriptions of these product roles on the screen (with title removed). I ask the audiences to guess which role is which and did a quick polling. As you can expect, the correct guess rate was less than 50%. You can see the activity through my full presentation pack and the recording on IIBA website.
From the activity, we came to a conclusion that:
There are a lot of overlaps among these 3 product roles.
And these are the 3 key overlaps in my opinions:
- Value Driven
- Acting as a bridge
- Product focus
Overlap 1: Value Driven
If we put the definitions of each role side by side (please see the image below for their definition) . You will find the word- Value is the common word across the board
What does the “Value” really refer to?
The most obvious one that people in any organisation will agree on is Business value — that sometime also translate to financial/monetary value, stakeholder value etc.
Thanks to all the success stories from those customer centric organisations, such as: Airbnb, Amazon and Zappos etc and the influence of design thinking and Job to be done framework.
Companies, leaders and the product world start to focus more and more on maximising customer value and delight them through: putting their problems and needs front and centre.
The third one is a new dimension, I am gladly to see this value being taking into consideration more and more when making product decisions nowdays, that is : society value — what value we are bringing to our society?
I am personally really grateful to see some current debate and discussions happening around the “ energy cost for mining bitcoins”, “ robot tax” etc. I am not standing on either side, but it really shows the raising awareness of the long term social impacts when making important product decisions.
I truly hope to see the “Society/Ethics” as a new dimension being adding to the traditional DVF framework
Overlap2: Acting as a bridge
“ As a business analyst , your role is to bridge the gap between Business and IT ”
this was my introduction of being a Business Analyst. I have always thought this is the bottom line for being a business analyst. Until I realise this definition has its naivety to it.
When Esther Derby was talking about the roles of leadership in an organisation during her keynote in Agile Australia 2015, there was a quote that really stick with me:
“ The biggest gap in the organisation is the gap between Contextual Knowledge and Front-line Knowledge, just like seperation the heads from the hands”
While she is describing this as a role for leaders within the organisation. This could also be the best description for our roles as Product people (BA/PO/PM).
In every organisation, there are 2 types of knowledge: Contextual knowledge (in the product context, this could refer to the knowledge within the senior executives’ head, such as: strategic directions of the companies or product) and Front-line knowledge (this could refer to the knowledge hold by the delivery team, such as the execution capabilities, systems constraints etc) .
Unfortunately based on Esther’s research, there is very limited overlap between these 2 knowledges and this is causing misalignment in behaviours across the organisations, inefficiency across the value chain and more importantly - loss of trust and engagement from employees and customers.
As product people, we are in a unique position to have access to knowledge from both worlds. So it is crucial for us to increase the overlap with these 2 types of knowledge through our exceptional communication and collaboration skills- just like a bridge.
So the whole organisation can operate more coherently (with head and hands are working together instead of against each other).
Overlap 3: Product focus
As product people we are all “Product focus”. This seems obvious but sometimes because of the role design or organisation complexity.
We sometimes boxed ourselves into a particular area of the product and lost our sight of the big picture of product.
You might be asking what are the big picture of product. This is my view on the big picture that every single product roles should pay attention to, regardless of the actual title.
When we make any key decision for our product or communicate our product to any stakeholders or team, the following 4 questions can be a good guidelines to make sure you are making a balanced and sustain product:
- Customers: Do our customer want/need this? What problems we are solving for them
- Business: Will Business Benefits from this? What business value we are bringing for the organisation?
- Technology: How feasible is this idea? Are they achievable?
- Society: Does it good for our society? What long term impact it has to our society
It’s also crucial for every product roles to have involvement across these levels:
- Vision: what does this product look like in 1,2,5 + years? What is the long term vision for this product
- Strategy: How to we get there? What are the high level strategic plan to achieve our vision?
- Execution: How fast we can get there? What are the help/resources needed to deliver our strategy
We may not required to be an expert and driver for every single domain of the big picture, however, to be an effective product person, it’s critical to be on the top of each domain and make “balanced decisions” based on them.
So, let’s go back to the original questions- Why we need a strong partnership among these product roles?
As we can see above, a strong partnership among these roles is so crucial and almost inevitable because:
- There are massive overlaps on skillsets and responsibilities among these 3 roles, it’s almost impossible to split these roles completely with its own responsibilities.
- It would cause confusion and impact the productivity and engagement from the delivery team if there are multiple product directions. The gap between front-line knowledge and contextual knowledge within the organisation will not only not being reduce by these roles, but potentially even increase due to a weak partnership among product roles.
- Remaining a product big picture view is a difficult task itself because everyone has their own bias and tend to have their focus lens. Product is an important engine of most organisations. To form a strong partnership among these roles will really help organisations focus on these key lens of the product and include more diverse opinions and balanced skillsets during the product decision making process.
To be Continued.
Thanks for reading part 1/2 of this blog.
All the opinions are based on my personal experiences and observations, please take them base on your own personal and organisational situation.
If you have a different views or experiences, you are welcome to email me or connect me on Linkedin to continue the discussion. I would love to hear from you!
You can see my full slides of the presentation pack here
If you like this topic, you can continue to read the next blog, we are going to cover — As a business analyst, How to form a strong partnership with the other product roles.
