Your best advisor for project development
How to design the perfect product both for the client (because it meets all their expectations) and for your company (because it maximizes profits)? The Product Owner has the answer.
Let's imagine that you are commissioned to develop a product. Congratulations. Surely you know this emotional sequence: first happiness, immediately afterwards a certain anguish due to the double challenge of fully complying with the client and at the same time with your company, that this project yields the maximum benefits, maximum quality and maximum return in the minimum time.
Nothing easy, and even less so in a closed competition environment. To achieve this optimal formula, the organization must be perfectly geared, oiled and focused with a agile working method. This is the key term flexibility, fluidity, waist for adapt skills and resources to different demands without losing effectiveness. The opposite of the typical rigid, excessively hierarchical structure that makes teamwork, decision-making and adaptation to a changing environment difficult.
What is needed to achieve that agility in optimal product development?
The vision, the team and a methodology such as the Scrum. And within that methodology, the key piece of the product owner (PO).
It is not easy to briefly define this figure due to its display of diverse qualities and its complex profile. That is why choosing the right person is the first of the winning decisions in the project.
Let's see. On the one hand, we have the client and his order. And on the other the company with its developer team. In the middle is the PO. It belongs to the company but plays the role of customer representative to communicate to your team in an impeccable and unambiguous way what are the expectations of that client and the exact characteristics of the product.
To truly understand those requirements, the PO also needs to thoroughly understand that other decisive factor in the configuration of the product: the context, the market, the business, the competition, the trends, the consumer profile, the user experience. That is why the common material of analysis for the OP is the data, both from that context and from the development of the product.
We therefore speak of a mediator with a talent for communication in different tones - from the CEO and the technical team of the client to the different members of the own team - but it also needs a mind that organizes and coordinates. takes care of assign tasks and deadlines to the team in the different phases of development to meet the 100% requirements. Without going overboard, one of the frequent mistakes is to add qualities that the client has not requested and that are cosmetic or will hardly be used.
In short, the OP is that expert and close mentor that we all want by our side in any moment of doubt. The balance of professional and personal qualities necessary to find simple solutions to complex problems. To analytical intelligence adds the emotional one because her role requires total availability, involvement, leadership no imposition to unlock positions, empathy, negotiating skills, realistic optimism, conviction. A great motivator, all in all.
