The 3 Stressful Trade-Offs Product Owners Have to Handle to Thrive

How to make decisions that maximize the odds of being successful.

Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

It’s impossible to please everyone as a Product Owner. Every day you will need to make trade-offs, which will generate discomfort with some people. Making trade-offs is stressful; conflicts are inevitable. Some examples are:

• You want to validate the assumptions as soon as possible, but developers want to avoid technical debt, and UX Designers want an amazing experience.
• How can your decisions result in better outcomes? Do you search for data to back your choices up, or do you trust your gut feelings?
• Customers have pain points that may not help you achieve business goals, yet they might leave you because your solution frustrates them. Should you focus on the customers’ problems or business goals?

How could you make trade-offs to maximize the odds of success? Let me share some ideas with you. Hopefully, you can use them and transform trade-offs into an easy task as a Product Owner.

1. Good Enough vs. Delightful Experience

As a Product Owner, you want to ensure you are leading the team in the right direction. The goal is to focus on a problem worth…