Embarrassing Confessions of a Product Owner
The 5 worst mistakes I made as a Product Owner.
It was 2012 when I started my journey as a Product Owner. When I look back, I couldn’t imagine the amount of challenges I would have to overcome to succeed. Beyond that, I had no idea how many times I would have to fall until I could learn. It’s been such a tough and rich road.
During the last 8 years, I’ve failed many times. The more I failed, the more I learned. But I have some confessions to make. Some of my misunderstandings led teams to significant disappointments.
Allow me to share some of my mistakes with you. Then, hopefully, you can avoid such embarrassments.
1. Pleasing everyone
During my first job as a Product Owner, I barely knew what I was supposed to do. Before that, I was a Business Analyst, and then the company decided to implement Scrum. That’s the moment I became a Product Owner. But I failed to understand my mission.
I used to think my main responsibility was to manage the stakeholders’ expectations. We always had more wishes to fulfill than time and capacity to implement them. Stakeholders kept pushing more wishes to the pipeline. I felt I should please everyone. This was a serious mistake.
