The 10 Attitudes of Outstanding Product Owners

It’s never about doing more. It’s all about finding the right thing to do.

Why are most Product Owners often stressed? Even though they may work long-hours trying to deliver on multiple stakeholders’ expectations, it seems never to be enough. Stakeholders keep pressuring to deliver more, while developers want to focus on solving the ever-increasing technical debt. How can you escape from this trap?

Your mindset is the secret. To succeed as a Product Owner, you must have a strategic mindset. Unfortunately, many companies still totally misunderstand who a Product Owner is. Often, the strategy is non-existent. It’s easy to fall into the execution mode without a thoughtful strategy.

A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.

LEE BOLMAN

Allow me to share some insights with you. Hopefully, you can avoid some painful failures on your journey.

1. Differentiation Before Execution

Product Owners should ask more, “How will we differentiate?” instead of “How can we implement this solution?”

It’s easy to fall in love with the solution. But before you jump into execution, you should invest some time in understanding your market. Do you want to compete in a crowded market, or do you want to differentiate from the crowds?

Differentiation can come in many flavors. Some possibilities are: exclusivity, simplicity, specific niche, customer-centric, and so on. Don’t search for differentiation opportunities solely on the solution. It’s key to have a broader view.

Shift from convergence to divergence

W. CHAN KIM, BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY, EXPANDED EDITION: HOW TO CREATE UNCONTESTED MARKET SPACE AND MAKE THE COMPETITION IRRELEVANT

2. Focus on Problems Worth Solving

Being a problem-solver is an essential trait of successful Product Owners. But not all problems are worthwhile to solve. I believe Product Owners should ask more often, “What problems are worth solving?” instead of “What problems can we solve?”

As a Product Owner, you will always have many problems or opportunities ahead of you. It’s impossible to tackle everything. That’s why you need to choose which problems to focus on. Once you know where to focus, it’s time to say no to everything else.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

STEVE JOBS

3. Strategy vs. Roadmap

Stakeholders love having predictability. They say they are agile, yet they insist on long-term roadmaps. Product Owners should ask, “What is the strategy for this year?” instead of “What should be part of this year’s roadmap?”

First comes the strategy, then we can work on a product roadmap. Without a well-thought strategy, a roadmap is pointless.

A woodsman was once asked, “What would you do if you had just five minutes to chop down a tree?”He answered, “I would spend the first two and a half minutes sharpening my axe.”

4. Understand the Why

Curiosity is essential for everyone. If you are not curious, you may ask, “What do we have to do?” instead of “Why should we do it?” Until you understand the why behind each request, you are not ready to talk about solutions.

If you do not ask why, you may end up working on something meaningless. If you have the right solution for the wrong problem, nobody will care about the solution.

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry

 ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

5. Speed the Learning Process

Sometimes you may ask questions like “What do we know about our customers?” but it might be more beneficial to ask, “What don’t we know about our customers?”

As Product Owners, it’s essential to accept our lack of knowledge about our end-users. The faster the Scrum Team learns more about the customers, the faster we can succeed.

If we believe we know enough, we might fail to delight our customers. Empathy is a crucial ingredient of successful teams.

One of the most critical lessons in product is knowing what we can’t know

MARTY CAGAN, INSPIRED: HOW TO CREATE TECH PRODUCTS CUSTOMERS LOVE

6. Needs vs. Requests

It’s easy to pay close attention to the top user requests. But what about the users’ real needs? Products Owners should strive to identify the hidden needs. Users tend to focus on the solution instead of the needs.

Product Owners are like doctors; we are specialists in building products. But the problem is that users often behave as doctors, too; they come with requests to implement instead of needs.

Imagine if you go to the doctor and ask her to prescribe you the medicine you want. At best, the doctor might laugh, but she will investigate which symptoms you will have, then specify the medicine. The patient explains the problem; the doctor finds the solution.

If your end-users behave like doctors, it’s your responsibility as a Product Owner to help the end-user explain the needs instead of the solution.

It’s not the customer’s job to solve their own problems. It’s your job to ask them the right questions.

MELISSA PERRI, ESCAPING THE BUILD TRAP: HOW EFFECTIVE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT CREATES REAL VALUE

7. Priority vs. Deadline

A product is not a project, yet stakeholders want an exact deadline. If Product Owners bend to arbitrary deadlines, you might end up focusing on the wrong elements. It’s more efficient to understand what outcome you want to achieve instead of defining a deadline to deliver the wishes.

Objective Key Results (OKR) work can help us define clear goals. Although the deadline is also present in OKRs, the focus is on the outcome. The most important aspect is to provide clarity to allow teams to focus on goals instead of matching arbitrary deadlines.

When people have conflicting priorities or unclear, meaningless, or arbitrarily shifting goals, they become frustrated, cynical, and demotivated.

JOHN DOERR, MEASURE WHAT MATTERS: HOW GOOGLE, BONO, AND THE GATES FOUNDATION ROCK THE WORLD WITH OKRS

8. Stakeholders’ happiness vs. Alignment

When I started my career as a Product Owner, I failed multiple times because I strived to keep the stakeholders happy. But it was impossible to please everyone; we tried to do a little bit of everything for everyone. The result was horrible: everyone was frustrated. To avoid this painful failure, you should strive for alignment among stakeholders instead of happiness.

How aligned are your stakeholders? The alignment is vital. Otherwise, frustration is waiting for you. You should strive to agree on what to do and what not to do. Not every stakeholder will have something prioritized, yet they should commit to this decision because they know the reason behind them.

Design by community is not design by committee…design is never democratic.

JEFF PATTON, USER STORY MAPPING: DISCOVER THE WHOLE STORY, BUILD THE RIGHT PRODUCT

9. Be Careful With Opinions

If you work at a Startup, the CEO might be one of your stakeholders. Yet, you should not follow her requests blindly. Product Owners should ask less, “What does the CEO want?” and ask more, “What does the CEO know?”

If you lead the team to implement something just because the CEO wants; eventually, you will end up building something irrelevant. As a Product Owner, you should understand what the CEO knows that you don’t. Be careful with opinions; they might lead you in the wrong direction.

The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.

SIMON SINEK, START WITH WHY: HOW GREAT LEADERS INSPIRE EVERYONE TO TAKE ACTION

10. Rational vs. Natural

Building a solution for the users’ real problem doesn’t ensure success. Some solutions are rational for you, but the users might not understand. To solve the problem, you should understand what is natural for the users instead of rational for you.

If the users have to adapt to use your solution, they might give up before even trying. People are willing to try something natural for them, but they are resistant to something unusual. As Product Owners, you can not underestimate the importance of empathizing with your end-users. Without empathy, success is hardly achievable.

If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.

DR. RALF SPETH

Wrap Up

If you want to become a robust Product Owner, you should have a deep understanding of Product Management. Don’t fall into the execution mode until you understand what you are fighting for.

You have a meaningful mission: to make the lives of people slightly better. To achieve your mission, you have to be your end-users’ advocate. Your users’ needs come first, and then you can search for business opportunities. Empathy is key to your success.