Q&A — Product Owner skills

One way Broadcom Software contributes to our community is by mentoring college students. This blog is the result of those conversations.

Question from: Gelila Getu, student, Marist College

I’m currently in my third year of college and I’m eager to enhance my skills to increase my chances of landing an internship. Which specific skills are highly valued by your company, especially in the role of Product Owner?

Answered by Kim Peelman, Product Owner, Broadcom’s Mainframe Software Division

Communication skills are key. That comes with the ability to:

• Facilitate and mediate conversations by empathizing with others and finding solutions that suit people with different needs.
• Make decisions that don’t make everyone happy, and having difficult conversations to address that disappointment.
• Organize your thoughts and share a simple message that is relatable to all your stakeholders.

It’s important that you have the ability to prioritize. This helps ensure your team is able to deliver rather than being distracted.

• You will always have more work to do than resources to accomplish it all.
• You will always have new requests coming in at any given time.

With clear priorities, you can have productive conversations with stakeholders so they understand why something needs to wait or something needs to be handled immediately.

Lastly, something that many people don’t consider is the ability to influence others without having official authority.

• Product Owners manage a backlog, not people, yet the core of their responsibility is to work with people to accomplish a goal.
• To influence without authority you have to build relationships and earn people’s respect so they listen to you even though you aren’t their “boss”.
• Having a high emotional intelligence helps. It’s human nature to ask “what’s in it for me”. When you understand the needs of each of your stakeholders, you can help everyone work towards the same goal even if they each have different reasons or ways of getting there.

Preparing for the Interview

When you’re interviewing, if you don’t already have some of these skills, it still looks very good if you say what skills you want to strengthen. Employers are happy to know what you’re good at, but they have even more respect when you are self-aware and eager to improve. I’ve been a Product Owner over 10 years and I’m still learning.

Bonus Tip

Being skilled with PowerPoint and Excel is also important. There are lots of free training resources available online, as well as some paid courses. Personally, I learn the most with practical real-world experience.

Gain hands-on experience by creating projects for yourself. For example, join a fantasy hockey league, use Excel to analyze player stats, compare it to the league’s points system, and create a PowerPoint presentation to suggest a plan for the draft, season strategy, and getting to playoffs.

Everyone says they know how to use Microsoft Office tools, so these won’t make you stand out at first. But these tools are assets to you, and you want to be proficient at using them. You will be better at analyzing data and communicating a plan.

Conclusion

By definition, a Product Owner manages a backlog, but in practice, a Product Owner connects people. To be successful, you need premium communication skills, high emotional intelligence, and the ability to prioritize in an ecosystem that is constantly changing. Find tools to help you analyze information, stay organized, and share insights. Enjoy being a life-long-learner, because the fun is in the challenge!