Product Owner: from side job to superhero?

The role of the Product Owner, you just kind of do it on the side. That was more or less the prevailing opinion about our beautiful profession ten years ago. How quickly the world can change: today, the Product Owner is probably the most important link in the Agile world. A kind of superhero with an unprecedented mandate. Nice of course, this professionalization, but it also brings a lot of pressure. I personally know that pressure too.

If you have the Professional Scrum Product Owner Assessment coming up soon, you can expect the following assignment. Complete the following sentence: “The Product Owner’s authority to change and update the Product Backlog is unlimited, except for…

This is followed by a number of possible answers, such as:

Decisions by the chief Program Manager.
Decisions by the CPO, the CEO or the board of directors.
Technical and architectural work that needs to be done first, as indicated by the chief enterprise architect.

Product Owner as Spiderman

Which answer would you circle? Or did you immediately see: all these answers are wrong. The only correct answer should be: “there are no exceptions, the entire organization must respect a Product Owner’s decision. That’s quite something. With an unprecedented mandate also comes a hefty responsibility. Or to put it another way, to quote Voltaire, or to a passage in Spiderman: ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’

You do a little bit of that, don’t you?

Ten years ago, that was completely different. It was the period when I came to the helm of Scrum Academy. We barely trained any Product Owners. To be honest, that role was often added by someone who had time to spare. Or by a junior with room in the diary. Those days are over! Fortunately. The role of Product Owner is taken more seriously. This is evidenced by the fact that there are more and more Product Owners and more Product Owners follow proper training. The professionalization has taken place and is only continuing.

The pressures of Product Ownership

You may not agree with me. But in many ways, the role of a Product Owner resembles that of a budding CEO . So as managing director of Scrum Academy, as far as I’m concerned, I experience similar pressure to the pressure you feel as a Product Owner. After all, aren’t we both busy: continuously exploring the market; keeping up with and integrating professional developments; ensuring a good return on investment; managing stakeholders and constantly balancing time, money and capacity. And all this while working intensively with teams and still having to dare to make decisions.

You can probably add several to this list just fine. Feel free to share them with me. But what I want to say is: something is expected of you as a Product Owner. By your teams, the organization and, if all goes well, by yourself as well.

Allow yourself continuous growth

To meet (and exceed) all those expectations, you want to invest in continuous self-development. A development both professionally, and of your personal leadership. For example, how do you grow in the role so that you can withstand political pressure and traditional hierarchies? How do you ensure that, despite existing structures, you continue to make an impact?

At Scrum Academy, we have developed the Product Owner Master Track in response to those questions. This intensive and hands-on program is specifically designed for Product Owners within a single organization who want to both deepen their subject matter expertise and strengthen their leadership skills. How? By addressing, among other things:

Agile frameworks
Stakeholder Management
Impact-driven product development
Personal leadership

Incompany program

In this way, you and the other Product Owners in the organization become even better at working effectively with teams and the business. This makes this in-company program particularly valuable for organizations with multiple Product Owners who strive for consistent working practices, strong alignment and maximum impact.

Do you also see the role of Product Owner as a crucial factor in a successful organization and want to take the next step? Feel free to contact us to explore the possibilities. We will gladly tailor the exact details of the Product Owner Master Track for you.