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Product Management

tech·nic·al·ly agile

How much of an impact can a strong, skilled product owner have?

Discover the vital role of a skilled product owner in driving team success and customer value, as Martin Hinshelwood shares insights on agile collaboration.

Published on 30 January 2023

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

5 minute read

https://nkdagility.com/resources/S3Xq6gCp7Hw

In my opinion, it’s the whole ball game.

How much of an impact can a strong, skilled product owner have?

Feature Factories versus Valuable Products.

If you let engineers be engineers, they will focus exclusively on engineering. It’s straightforward to bring a group of skilled, experienced engineers together to build a lot of stuff.

Stuff isn’t what we are after though, it’s building valuable solutions and solving compelling problems that we need. That’s the tough bit.

Coders, software engineers, and testers just want to get through the work.

Don’t get me wrong, software engineers are incredibly creative and talented individuals, but without the right guidance, they will focus on delivering work rather than explore how that work might have the greatest impact in the customer environment.

If all we do is produce stuff, we end up with a feature factory that is super productive but not very effective. Efficiency over Effectiveness.

The value of a great product owner.

This is where Scrum really got it right. By creating the product owner role, they created an environment where the cocreation of valuable products and features serves both the customer as well as the organization.

A product owner works closely with customers and product stakeholders to identify the most compelling problems to be solved, and the most valuable solutions that need to be built.

Having someone in the organization that is focused on ensuring that the right things is built, at the right time, makes all the difference in the world. The product owner provides the developers with insights into why items matter, how those items are game changes, and what needs to be created to achieve customer and organizational objectives.

The difference between an average product owner and a great product owner.

An average product owner is going to be thinking about becoming the funnel for the organization, the customer, and the product stakeholders. The central part of contact that assimilates all the information and requests into a single product backlog with a user story for each item.

When you work with a great product owner, they aren’t looking at that. They have delegated that element of assimilating information from customers into a product backlog to the team.

They are looking into the future, doing critical analysis of markets and competitors, and thinking about how to deliver valuable products and features to customers at the most valuable time. Being proactive sometimes means creating the product before the customer even knows they need it, and delivering it just in time for that to have a significant impact in the customer’s life.

Timing

Once a customer asks you for a product or a feature, technically, you are already too late.

It takes time for you to define the problem correctly, identify the best potential solutions, and create the most valuable solution for them. At this point, the customer is waiting on something that they need, and competitive advantage or competitive parity is slipping through their fingers.

They need to respond, now, and they can’t because they are waiting on the feature or product from you.

This is where a great product owner truly comes into their own.

They aren’t simply waiting on feedback from customers, they are actively cocreating potential solutions for customers and enabling customers to achieve competitive advantage through the products and features that the team create.

If you think in terms of cost of delay, what does it cost your organization and the client if you don’t have the product or feature that they need? What happens if it takes you six months to build the solution that they need today?

So, great product owners are looking forward and evaluating markets, competitors, and future customer needs to inform what the team need to be thinking about and anticipating what customers are going to need in the future.

If it’s a B2B product, the product owner is looking at the state of the organization and what is happening in the business.

What are the strategic objectives of the organization?
What is the general direction of travel the organization is following?
What are the potential threats and opportunities for the organization?

They take this analysis and design loads of small experiments to figure out what best resonates with the organization and the customer. What elements of the product or feature is proving to be the most valuable in delivering competitive advantage.

When a customer does approach the product owner and ask for a specific feature or product, the product owner can simply ask them if they want to switch that feature on for you or integrate that feature into the product suite right away.

In essence, saying to a customer that we have a version of that ready to go for you and we can build on that initial feature and iterate as needed.

There’s a great book called ” crossing the chasm ’’ by Geoffrey Moore and it’s primary focus lies in helping product owners and development teams think about designing for the innovators and early adopters rather than the laggards in the product lifecycle.

How do we identify the early adopters for our story?
How do we engage them?
How do we build products and features that excite them?

We’re doing this because what the early adopters want today, the laggards want in six months time.

Just planting the idea with the early adopters enables the organization to lead the market rather than follow the market. This is what great product owners do. They use empiricism and evidence based management to anticipate where things are headed and what is need to serve that market.

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okay

so the question is how much of an impact can a strong skilled product owner have

I oh ball game right I mean it’s it’s if you let Engineers be engineers they will do the engineering right we we can we can it’s it’s fairly it’s fairly straightforward I know that’s a generalism but it’s fairly straightforward to get a group of people to build lots of stuff right to special engineering teams Sops coders software teams testers they want to get through the work they want to build lots of stuff and you you can you can move teams more easily towards creating lots of stuff so now we’ve got lots of stuff coming out the other end but it’s not the right stuff it’s not the valuable stuff it’s just stuff it’s just what customers have been asking for it’s just what which isn’t necessarily the right thing

so we can get quite quickly to building lots of stuff but it’s very very difficult to build the right stuff and the difference between uh an average product owner right which not a bad product owner is just bad right there’s no point in having them an average product owner is going to be focused on how do I be that funnel for for the organization the customer stuff coming in to get a single story right that’s an average product owner but when you have a real product owner like a great product owner they’re they’re they’re they’re not looking at that they’re looking forward into the they’ve delegated that to their team already right the team’s doing that they’re looking forward into the future they’re thinking about how do I get things in front of the customer when they need them not too late because ultimately when your customer asks you for features when they ask you for capabilities in your product it’s already too late because it takes time for you to deliver those features and then by the time you’ve delivered them that’s the delay the cost of delay between the ask or acos of player between what the customer is asking for and when you’re actually delivering it I mean it might be two weeks but it might be a big thing and it’s three months it might be six months what what does what does not having those features cost the business from when they realize they need them

so great product owners are looking forward into the future they’re looking at the markets if it’s a b2c product if it’s a B2B product they’re looking at the state of the organization they’re looking at what’s what’s happening in the business what direction is strategic direction is the business going and building lots of little experimental features to figure out what resonates best with the users in order to solve those future problems and test those ideas so that when customers do ask for features your answer is would you like us to turn that on for you we’ve got our uh uh uh you know uh we’ve got a version of that ready to go for you would you like to try it or even it’s already there right I mean that’s that’s the that’s the trick that’s um I can’t remember the name of the author but there’s a book called crossing the chasm um and that’s what it focuses on is how do we stop building for the laguards right the people that that they aren’t the innovators they’re just the people there’s table Stakes right products must do those things how do we how do we cross over and start building for the early adopters how do we how do we get early adopters into our story how do we engage with those people how do we find them so that we can start building features for the early adopters because what the early adopters want today is what the laguards want in six months time

right so then then those people that are the early adopters who are early adopters because they want to engage and they want to play with new experimental things you’re engaging with them and they’re telling all their friends who are the laggards right all the cool stuff that’s coming down the line and they’re like oh that’s cool but we don’t need it yet right we don’t need that yet because we’re not using it but even just that planting that seed of that idea starts to lead to the market rather than follow the market right so I and my market I mean either external or internal market so the the the difference between the thing that makes that product owner great is that that they’re able to anticipate what the next thing is using evidence-based techniques using empiricism

Levering hypothesis driven engineering practices to be able to get it one step ahead of where everything else is the ultimate the ultimate Accolade for a great product owner is that that company’s competitors are looking at what they’re doing and saying what are they doing let’s build that right that means you’re leading the market rather than following the market and that’s kind of where you want to be

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