Product Owners and Continuous Improvement

No matter how much you know, or what you know, you can always get better

As Product Owners, it’s so easy to be caught up in the day-to-day activities. You need to write stories, test acceptance criteria, meet with stakeholders, conduct product demos, prioritize the backlog, answer team questions, respond to emails, the list goes on! How much time are you setting aside each day, week, or sprint to dedicate towards personal improvement? What does Product Owner improvement look like? What are some activities you can do to identify areas for continuous improvement? Hopefully with this article, I’ll help you answer some of these questions!

In Japanese language kata (though written as 方) is a frequently-used suffix meaning “way of doing,” with emphasis on the form and order of the process. Other meanings are “training method” and “formal exercise.” The goal of a painter’s practicing, for example, is to merge his consciousness with his brush; the potter’s with his clay; the garden designer’s with the materials of the garden. Once such mastery is achieved, the theory goes, the doing of a thing perfectly is as easy as thinking it.

What can you work on as a Product Owner?

Here are just a few types of improvements that come to mind as Product Owners that can result in better products, stronger teams, and happier customers:

• Becoming a better problem solver
• Becoming a better cost cutter
• Becoming a better time manager
• Becoming a better communicator
• Becoming a better visual communicator

It’s important to ask, what does better mean in these scenarios? Does being a better problem solver mean writing better stories? Does it mean understanding customer problems more clearly? What does becoming a better visual communicator mean? Better PowerPoints? Better product designs? Determining what better means to you is the first step in figuring out what you want to improve, the first step in the kata cycle.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/The_Improvement_Kata.html

The next part of improvement is developing an understanding of where you are at right now. You need to have real examples of things you are trying to improve upon, such as story size, time spent planning, deployment time, work in progress. Once you have this, you can set yourself a goal to work towards.

The Japanese word kaizen means “change for better”, with inherent meaning of either “continuous” or “philosophy”

Time to experiment!

So you have a goal in mind, but you don’t know exactly how to get there. This is where a little bit of science and experimentation comes in! In order to grow, you need to try new things, start by doing one thing different at a time. For example, maybe your goal is to be a better communicator. And you have some examples that your emails are a little hard to read. So you know it’s written communication that you want to improve. An experiment you can perform is writing on the side, start a journal, take more notes in meetings, or read more! It’s important to try one new thing at a time, see if it is helping you move towards your goal, if it is, keep doing it, if not, then you learned from that experiment and it’s time to move onto the next one.

http://nicholasgarrigan.com/daily-motivation-2-12-18/

Are you getting feedback? How does it feel?

So the quote is a little extreme, but I love the idea behind it. While you go through this improvement process, you need to keep in mind that growing is uncomfortable. And in order to grow and learn if your experiments are working you need to get feedback. Getting feedback can be tough, but it’s important to keep in mind that the feedback will help you grow. Don’t be defensive, don’t try and explain your position, just try and receive and process the feedback from an analytical perspective.

Wrapping-Up

Keep it simple. These are the steps to grow in any aspect of your life, being a better Product Owner included!

1. Identify an area of opportunity for growth
2. Understand what you are currently doing
3. Set a goal
4. Experiment and learn
5. Get feedback and adapt
6. Be awesome

Thanks for reading!

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

Citations

The Toyota Kata Website. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/Homepage.html

Hanski, M. (2017, December 07). Want To Be A Better Writer? Read More. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-hanski/read-more_b_5192754.html

Daily Motivation 2/12/18. (2018, February 12). Retrieved from http://nicholasgarrigan.com/daily-motivation-2-12-18/