What Are The Skills That You Need To Be A Product Owner
Scrum is a framework that believes in defining different roles. For instance, a product owner is someone who keeps the product backlog, designs user stories, interfaces with the Scrum team as well as the stakeholders, and so on. While the responsibilities are many, what exactly are the skills that are required to become a successful product owner? So gear yourself up, as in this article we shall take a deep dive into the top skills that make a great product owner so that you can decide whether you are capable of being one or not!
1. You Must Be a Great customer Delighter –
A product owner is not only an administrator, but he is also responsible for taking down whatever the stakeholder asks, and then adding it to the product backlog. While you are needed to listen to the needs of your stakeholder, you should not just jot down the information blindly, you also need to latent the desires and needs of the customer that he himself has not yet thought of. For instance, if your customer wants a new email system, you should further come up with an idea where the user can convert the email into a pdf!
If you think that you have the skill, then you are free to go ahead and start with a product owner training course.
2. You Should Be A Great Storyteller –
A good product owner goes beyond just creating a bland user story and sending it to the developer team. He also tries to think up ways through which the user story can be transformed into product features that delight the user. For instance, imagine a situation where you have the story for a backlog item for a ridesharing company that uses emails to give receipts to the user. Now if the user is a person who needs an excel report of the receipt to give to her company, you can come up with a feature that provides the information in a pdf or excel format.
3. You Must Be a Developer Yourself –
As a product owner, you need to be a developer as well. In a Scrum scenario, it is sometimes the situation that scrum team roles become so defined that the focus shifts away from the quality of the product to who does what. So as a product owner, if you think that your role is limited to owning the product backlog, creating user stories, and delivering it to the developer team, and that is it, next the developers do the rest of the work, then you may be wrong. You are a part of the team, and your responsibility lies in guiding through the development process as well!
Final Word
While the role of the product owner lies in providing leadership to your Scrum team, you need to remember that you are part of the team as well! If you feel that you have all the qualities mentioned above, then go ahead and grab the position of Product owner!
