No, You Don’t Need More Than 4 Hours a Week to Manage Your Product Backlog
Moving from task management into creating value
Do you know what the actual job of a Product Owner is?
A decade ago, when I got my first job as a Product Owner, I would summarize my job as managing stakeholders, clarifying their needs, and ensuring developers create solutions matching the pre-defined requirements. I spent at least half of my time working on the Product Backlog; I was afraid developers wouldn’t have all the necessary information to start coding. I did my best to close all open knots before sharing anything with them. That’s how I missed the point of a Product Owner is.
What worries me is that many people have a similar misunderstanding. I’ve seen many Product Owners investing too much time to manage their Product Backlogs. I learned the hard way my job was not managing backlog or stakeholders but identifying opportunities to create value and lead teams to solve meaningful problems.
Unfortunately, many people still think they have to write unquestionable Product Backlog Items. Here are some questions I often get:
- How do I write better User Stories?
- How detailed should the Product Backlog be?
