From good to great product ownership

By Nick Butler

Tags: Agile

The Product Owner has arguably the most challenging of the roles in the Scrum process. To learn more about this role and how better to support it as a Scrum Master, I went to Jeff Patton’s Passionate Product Ownership Workshop.

For anyone who is not familiar with Jeff’s work, he’s an expert on product ownership and the author of the renowned Agile book User Story Mapping. This book takes you on the user’s journey through a product to give you insights into how to build something of value to a user and a client. Here at Boost, we do User Story Mapping in kick-off meetings.

One highlight was the importance of learning velocity, along with making specific goals that speak to learning more about how your users/customers use your product rather than making assumptions. This involves using metrics and data to understand how your customers currently interact with your product. Then you create a hypothesis on why this is and how you could improve their experience.

This is an approach we’ve been exploring at Boost, and Jeff gave me a deeper understanding of how to implement it.

Another thing that resonated with me was the use of an opportunity canvas to explore potential opportunities with a product.

An opportunity canvas begins with identifying problems or solutions. First up, you look at the types of customers you have and the challenges they currently experience with the product (different customers may have different issues so it is best to identify these customers/issues separately). Next, you explore how your customers currently deal with the problems you have identified or any workarounds they may be using to meet their needs.

From here, you can work to identify how to solve the problems so that you can move your business forward (as well as fulfill the needs of your customers).

I found this process particularly interesting, and I’d be keen to hear from product owners who’ve tried it.

Contemplating the insights I’ve gleaned from the course, as well as from my experience working alongside Product Owners, I’ve three top tips for moving from good to great product ownership:

1. Look at the opportunity canvas as a way to determine both the needs of your customer and the business value in the work.
2. Involve the team in product discovery work. Allow them to experiment and learn alongside you. Our discovery workshop guide steps you through running a one-day discovery workshop.
3. Be prepared to minimise the output of work but maximise the outcome. The point is not volume, but the quality and impact of your product.

Further reading

Want to know more about product ownership? Check out these posts:

• The Product Owner’s Guide to working with developers
• Do you need a team of product owners?
• The Board episode 5 — the Product Owners show

The Product Owner Scrum Primer

How to maximise your impact as a Product Owner on a Scrum project.

1. What is Scrum?
2. Six signs of a successful Scrum Team
3. Making multiple Product Owners work in Scrum: A case study
4. Working with stakeholders in Scrum
5. Product discovery for Scrum Product Owners
6. User stories in Scrum
7. The Scrum Product Owner role summarised