I've been a product owner working on agile projects for several years now, mainly using the Scrum approach. However, it's only recently I found myself in a position where I needed to recruit additional product owners to work on a larger development project.
This obviously got me thinking, as I hovered my pen over a blank sheet of A4, about what makes a great Scrum product owner and what I should write in my job ad.
The agile approach to product and software development is still a relatively fresh approach. It's only really been around for a handful of years, and has only come into its own in the last five or six years. So ready made product owners are few and far between.
Product managers or project managers are entirely different roles for a different, less agile, approach. That said many product and project managers have the potential to transition, if they're flexible in their approach and willing to re-learn the agile way. So there's the first characteristic.
A product owner should be flexible and willing to learn and adapt.
This obviously got me thinking, as I hovered my pen over a blank sheet of A4, about what makes a great Scrum product owner and what I should write in my job ad.
The agile approach to product and software development is still a relatively fresh approach. It's only really been around for a handful of years, and has only come into its own in the last five or six years. So ready made product owners are few and far between.
Product managers or project managers are entirely different roles for a different, less agile, approach. That said many product and project managers have the potential to transition, if they're flexible in their approach and willing to re-learn the agile way. So there's the first characteristic.
A product owner should be flexible and willing to learn and adapt.
Iw as now on a flow. Here are some more characteristics I identified when drafting that job ad.
Be imaginative, visionary and driven.
The product owner needs to be able to imagine the product in it's complete form, be able to touch, taste and even smell it in his own mind. He (or she) needs to be able to envision what it will do, how it will work and, importantly have the communication skills to explain to others what he can see. That means a successful product owner must be:
A strong communicator, negotiator and a leader.
Getting across the vision for the product and it's resulting epics and user stories is only one part of the good product owner's repertoire. Her skills in eliciting product requirements from customers and users need to be honed, together with the ability to write these down clearly and succinctly in user stories She also needs to be able to communicate well with the Scrum Master and the Scrum team, for without their understanding and buy in they won't get the vision or be able to deliver the required user experience, features and functionality. She needs to be able to negotiate with the Scrum team in Sprint planning meetings and Sprint reviews.
She needs to be a strong leader, to make key decisions under pressure. Move the sprint delivery date or drop or de-scope the user stories in it? Persuade the Scrum team to put in that extra effort to deliver what's needed.
So she also needs to be a good decision maker.
The product owner needs to also be a team player. Scrum is about lots of different teams and functions pulling together towards a common vision and set of goals. The product owner therefore needs to be able to balance the need to lead with also being a team player. He needs to be a good listener to understand issues and challenges the Scrum team and Scrum Master are passing on in their feedback. The product owner needs to pull their weight, roll up their sleeves and get stuck in when the team needs to pull together. The product owner needs to be a good coach as not all organisations are big enough nor can afford a dedicated Scrum Coach to fulfil that role.
These are all key traits. Other skills that are needed are more technical. The product owner needs to understand Scrum and the Agile Manifesto. They need to know the tools (such as the backlog, sprint plan, burndown charts etc) that are to be used, the software applications used for tracking sprints etc etc. They need to be able to articulate the user stories using the right language a developer will understand, they need to be able to understand, at a high level, the limitations and challenges coder will face when developing user stories.
And above all, I really believe that the most useful trait a really great product owner requires , above all other characteristics and skills, is the ability to learn and to keep learning. Agile is still fairly new as an approach to product development. New tools and approaches arise all the time. The product owner needs to be passionate about the agile approach and to keep learning from trying things in the field, from things that don't quite work, from feedback from the customer and the Scrum team and from the wealth of blogs, books, web-sites and training materials available.
So to summarise, my job ad ended up stating that the product owner I was looking for should:
- Be a visionary leader with passion and drive in order to derive imaginative products and solutions
- Have the strong written and verbal communications skills needed to articulate those ideas into tangible user stories
- Be able to motivate and excite all stakeholders, including clients and Scrum teams to buy into and deliver the vision
- To make the right decisions under pressure and to sell those decisions to the wider team
- To coach the team and listen to their feedback in order to continually improving the product and the agile process
- To understand and teach others about the agile approach and the Scrum tools & artefacts in order to ensure the team is pulling together, working as one towards the vision
- Have a sense of fun and imagination
If you have most if not all of these traits, then you may be the product owner I'm looking for. Why not drop me an email via this blog?
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