Why I love being a product owner —and other lessons from deploy(impact) 2022
On Saturday, the deploy(impact) software development program came to a close. Our team “The Fellowship of the String” won the Team Learnings Award 2022!
deploy(impact) gives participants the opportunity to learn how to develop a product from business requirements to proof of concept over 6 weeks. It’s organised by women++ which has the mission to increase diversity in tech.
Here’s a quick recap of our journey and my key learnings:
The Program
Our Challenge:
Wikimedia Switzerland asked us to help them improve OpenEdu.ch, a platform for teachers & educators to find open educational content. They asked us to create an ontology and focus on the backend rather than frontend.
Our Solution:
Our team presented a proof of concept with the key elements being:
- an improved user experience with simplified forms and flows, and additional features like the Wiki Login and the personal/moderation page (see Figma prototype)
- the underlying ontology, mapping the classes & elements of our solution and their interrelationships
- the NLP-enabled automation (e.g. to translate into different languages, or to identify related content within the platform),
- crawlers & scrapers to source relevant content from specific sites within the Wiki Universe
- a robust, scalable backend architecture using microservices, Docker containers, and Azure as a cloud-computing platform.
Our Journey
Week 1: Excited and confused.
Excited because we were among the 12% of applicants selected for this program which promised a hands-on experience in software development. Confused because we didn’t properly understand the challenge and its scope.
Week 2: More confused.
.. because our research or interactions with the challenge-setter would not fully clarify our understanding of the challenge. We debated: What is an ontology and what is it good for?
Week 3: Organized.
We decided to go ahead by defining the challenge and its scope for ourselves, and introduced the roles of product owner and scrum master within our team (instead of (deputy) project manager).
Week 4: Productive alone.
Team members worked on their respective parts but were hesitant to show them to others as they were ‘not ready’.
Week 5: Productive together.
Time pressure worked in our favor: team members had to show their ‘unfinished’ (impressive) work which helped us see the bigger picture, move puzzle pieces together and work on missing parts.
Week 6: Exhausted and proud.
After meeting every evening to finalize our proof-of-concept and at the same time prepare our presentation, we were very happy to celebrate our achievements together with the other teams.
We won the Team Learning Award 2022 at deploy(impact) as our individual learning reflections showed that each one of us made great strides along the way.
The quality of solutions presented by all teams was really remarkable. I have no doubts that any team would have similarly deserved the award we won.
My Key Learnings
Generally:
- The solution can only be as good as the level of understanding of the problem.
- It always comes back to the users. Technical requirements need to be defined based on user needs.
- Hence: asking the right questions is key. Whom do we build this for? What are the limitations of this approach? Could it be done differently?
- Visualising and prototyping are crucial in multidisciplinary teams. Demos are essential to keep the team together.
- Working in multidisciplinary teams requires translation. We have to adapt our language for each other (at the cost of being less technically precise but better understood).
Technically:
- The program opened new horizons for me: I learnt what’s an ontology, how to work with Github (and push a commit to Github), and quite a lot about the backend (in our case about Azure, Docker containers, microservices, elasticsearch, and how they are all connected).
- The expert-led workshops allowed me to get deeper insights into agile methodology, NLP, and architectural design.
Personally:
- I discovered that I love the role of the product owner. It spans from understanding the user needs to the technical possibilities, and requires lots of curiosity and multidisciplinary communication skills. It allows me to further sharpen my sense of what’s crucial and what’s less important, and bring in my sense of quality (aka perfectionism) to challenge and support the team to live up to high standards. As a generalist who wants to learn and understand, this role is great for me.
- I learned that I intuitively understand technology. Even though I don’t have a degree in STEM, I know how to ask the right questions (up to a certain technical degree). By completing more training in this field, I’ll be better able to project a product vision and roadmap, identify key features, and ask more specific questions.
In summary, investing so much time into this program and our teamwork was very much worth it for me. The experience brought me closer to the roles I aspire to take in the future.
I want to express my gratitude for the amazing work and support by the entire women++ team, the sponsors, mentors, and other supporters along the way.
A big THANK YOU especially to my team of extremely dedicated and talented individuals who took their time to teach me some of their skills and knowledge.
