Roleshift from Project Manager to Product Owner is no small feat

Many a Product Owner starts the adventure as Product Owner with fresh courage with minimal knowledge of the scrum framework in their back pocket. How different and more complicated can it be than being a Project Manager? Piece of cake if you have years of experience right?

After all, if the role is well defined, surely many people should be able to fill that role effortlessly? Surely practice is more recalcitrant.

If we look at successful scrum teams, those teams have a Product Owner who makes the difference in attitude, behavior, mindset and drive. As a Product Owner, you are given the tough task of finding valuable solutions to the (future) problem sets of the user of your product. This allows you to make or break the product and the team.

The assumption too often is that the product owner’s vision and associated ideas are just so there. And then also easy to organize. The assumption also adds that you get all the room you need and that when difficult choices are made, the key stakeholders always agree and are united.

The duties of a Product Owner almost require an all-rounder. From stakeholder management, inspiring with a vision, coming up with concepts to helping with technical choices.

But where do you start?

1. Make sure you have a vision for your product: Product Vision

Enthusiastic Product Owners are quite willing to allow themselves to live through the delusion of the day, where the development team can realize beautiful features for you. Without thinking carefully about what is really necessary. You get a beautiful valuable product, but you miss the market momentum because it takes too long. Therefore, set a clear product vision and think about what features do and do not fit. Listen to your development team if your plans and wishes are realistic with the right moment of release (window of opportunity) in mind.

2. Get a mandate, which keeps the pace up

As a Product Owner, you need to make sure you have enough mandate from your clients to help your team make day-to-day decisions. Your team cannot wait 2 days because you need to check with your stakeholders first. So make sure you get mandate to make decisions within agreed bandwidth. I always phrase it as the highway with emergency lanes. If you agree that you may deviate to the emergency lanes, without coordination with your stakeholders it gives you the right space to move with your team.

3. Empty agenda, be available

I am often asked how much time do you spend as a Product Owner. For me, there is no other option than to think of it as a full-time position. Your team works all day on your product. There are many questions to answer. If you are there, team members are less likely to make assumptions. There is plenty of work to do, because preparation is key. A prioritized backlog with a clear user story. Just like preparing the Sprint Backlog for the upcoming Sprint Planning. It aims to ensure that all team members can work efficiently and effectively. This is because then there is more time for product development and you end up with more valuable features to add to your product. So clear your schedule of anything that doesn’t have to do with your product!

Product Owner is a profession. A new profession. A great profession. And that requires good training and top skills.