The Art of Product Ownership: The Three F's

A great Product Owner brings purpose and vision to a development team and is critical to keeping a project on track. At Effect, we love to work closely with our Product Owners because they act as our guiding lights to ensure we build the right thing, the right way. 

Having worked with countless Product Owners over the last decade, I have seen it all. The good, the bad and the... everything else. In my experience, a great Product Owner always leads to a great end-product and a great outcome for the business. 

When working on a web project, there is always a lot going on and a lot to think about, so I am here to share a few words of advice for anyone about to embark on this journey to make the responsibility of Product Ownership just a little easier... 

Filter the noise 

Think of yourself as the protector of the team. To keep them focused and working on the right thing, you will shield the development team from stakeholders, unless essential to the project. You will gatekeep the information gathered from your wider organisation and just filter through the key feedback to us after you have carefully considered it.  

You are the voice of your organisation and should be empowered to lead the project by focusing on the key outcomes and objectives, rather than nit-picky feedback that has the potential to distract the team from doing their best work and making progress on the things that matter. 

Flexibility is everything 

Every project will have a degree of change. Change is normal, expected, and critical to meeting the project's objectives. Try to embrace the unknown and remember that we have systems in place to make sure that changing requirements are accounted for properly. We are going to be constantly refining your backlog of work and working together to prioritise the next most important thing via our regular meetings and stand-ups. We will manage change in a transparent manner, so everyone involved always knows what is happening and changes are recorded in our documentation and reporting. 

Form the right team culture 

It is important to understand that the Product Owner sets the tone for the team culture during the development project. Coming in with a collaborative and open attitude is critical and will allow us to form an efficient working dynamic. By forming a team culture based on trust and open communication, we will establish a high-performing team as excited about your project as you are. It is key that you have dedicated time to your web project and can be responsive to the team when they have questions or when it comes time for you to test features. We do a lot of work with our Product Owners remotely and are well versed in using remote tools to ensure lines of communication stay open and useful even when we are physically distanced.  

Bonus tip: Have you thought about your content stream?  

This is often an afterthought for some organisations embarking on a new website build and can cause delays to your project going live. Remember, planning your content is as important as planning your features and that great content can also help to drive the direction of the features on your website.  

Talk to us about how we can support both your feature development and your content roadmap.