The Three Pillars of Mindset for a Successful Product Owner
Successful product owners have a mindset that guides the team to create innovative and
amazing products and features. Their unique approach is critical to the team’s delivery of
valuable software.
Photo by Christoph Schmid on Unsplash
This mindset can be summarized in the three pillars of product ownership, value, decision
making, and engagement. Let’s look at each of these. First and foremost, product owners
must be very concerned about value at every step.
1. Value
Value is about how to better spend the organization’s money. It’s about been responsibly
following the priorities and how robust each feature should be.
To get a better perspective of how value works in a product, value can be considered in
terms of spending the organization’s money as if it were its own money.
For example, in a project to redecorate one of your rooms with professionals designers, If
you are the owner of the house, you are the product owner of the project. You need to take
care a lot about how your money is spent. Your ideas about what is valuable in that room,
in yor house are probably different from other homeowners. Designers can’t read your
mind, but you don’t know all the options either because it’s not your field.
In this case, it is necessary to work with them regularly to explain what is valuable to you
and listen to the options and alternatives they present. The Product Owner needs to
constantly weighing cost and time with what is valuable.
2.Decision Making
Great product owners understand flow and how it keeps the team focused and moving at a
good pace.
Most teams need a great product owner making decisions to keep the necessary cadence
and flow.
Let’s back at the redecorate room example.The longer it takes, the more you might be
paying the designer. So, if I stall making decisions, they’re idle, or might have to do rework
on some parts of the room.
Similar for our projects, if decision making is slow, the team might not progress as
quickly and the features and product might cost more.
3. Engagement
Product owners need to engage to helping the team focus on what value means to the
product. This goes by hand in hand with every level of detail and every step of the way so
that the product is not excessively or insufficiently designed.
In order to do this, the Product Owner must be present for the team and be available to
listen 24/7 and share the context regarding the product and make timely decisions. In the
redesign example, if the Product Owner is not involved in what the team does every
day, it could delay decisions and the team can make assumptions about what is
valuable, which could be wrong assumptions. Simply put, the Product Owner is
responsible for product tactics.
References
Kim, Y. H., Kim, D. J., & Wachter, K. (2013). A study of mobile user engagement
(MoEN): Engagement motivations, perceived value, satisfaction, and continued
engagement intention. Decision Support Systems, 56, 361–370.
Gonring, M. P. (2008). Customer loyalty and employee engagement: an alignment for
value. Journal of Business Strategy.
Why Value-Based Care Must Include Shared Decision-Making
Source: Thinkstock - Shared decision-making, or the practice of an informed patient
participating in treatment…patientengagementhit.com
