Hello, and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast I might pass in is I'm the CEO of quality plans. And we are taking a new turn, a new chapter in our agile software development series. We are going to the heart of things, the most important episode. Our agile software development series. And we are going to talk about the key role, the role that defines more of the success, the direction, the momentum of an agile software product project.

And that role is the product owner. So this idea of somebody. That truly owns the product. They are the beating heart. They are the central force of an agile project. And I can tell you that it's not a role for the faint heart. It is complex. It is. Big stakes, because as you're pulling a lot of different things together, and I want to talk about how they think what they have to weigh up and some of the key activities that they do within a project.
And I will say this, that if you are. In the world of software and technology and design. If you are interested in, um, a career in the world of technology and product design, there is no more important role than the product owner. And these are the most scarce. People ever, because it is a little, a little bit left brain, right.

Brain. And it requires quite a bit of experience and it is. It's intense. Um, and so this is why they're scarce, rarely cited in the wilderness. They are product owner, and that's why it's so important that I share with you. This thinking to hopefully inspire you, inform you. Maybe you can become a product owner, or if you are one.
I hope that this only goes to confirm to you not only the key value that you create, but maybe gives you a refund on the importance of the role. Okay. So we will do some other roles as well in this series. So make sure you stay June for the next episode, but the product owner is the backbone. But we've also got people like the scrum master.
We have different team members. We actually have a whole range of stakeholders that are involved, but all of them, all of them, a guided by inspired, by supported by. The product owner, because the product owner is somebody at their heart who is the mini CEO of the product. They are the true leader of the product.
And as any good servant leader would be, they are open. Uh, they are unbiased and they take on board the contributions of everybody in the team in order to get the very best product and to make the best decisions now, um, what is essential is that there's sort of an unspoken thing about product owners.
And I think this idea of them becoming the driving force. Of the product. And what I mean by that is there are going to be moments, which I call the Valley of darkness, where there's a lot of uncertainty in the project and everyone's like, Oh my gosh, it's complex. We don't have much time. We don't know exactly what we're trying to do.

The things we thought we'd do. And it working. This is going to happen and it will happen even more if you're building a first-generation product and it will happen more. If you're trying to do something that's ambitious, you really trying to shift the needle. So. Make sure that product owners, whether you're a product owner or you're recruiting product owners, that they are people who take extreme ownership, extreme ownership that is inclusive, not that is charging off into the wilderness and leaving everyone behind, but truly brings.
People together. Now I want to talk about the kind of three key things, activities that the product owner does. So we're kind of told a little bit about their mindset and behaviors. Let's talk about like the things that they actually do. The first one is managing the backlog. The backlog is the work to be done today this week, this sprint, and it is.

Constantly changing and being reprioritized and is the product owner who makes the final call there. So managing the backlog job, number one, job. Number two, very related to this is working out what is going to be in which release of, uh, The product or what we're doing in sprint one versus sprint two and looking at the overall roadmap that we're going on, whether it's two MVP, Bita V one V two V three.
In one, two months, one, two years, this idea of release management and making the call about what's in and what's out, what's serving the greater good. So that's the thing, big thing, release management. And the third one is stakeholder management because in an agile project, you can have a lot of different stakeholders.
Everything from exec sponsors, uh, expert contributors, um, brains trust, um, direct product owner, project owner. Uh, you could have business analysts, design, thinkers, user interface, designers, Java developers, dev ops, you name it. They could all be in there and they all spin around the product owner. The product owner, they are the guiding light for the rest of the team.
So it's really important. It's a pivotal role. And if you're excited about it, I really do encourage you to research Google a way around the role of a product owner, because they're incredibly hard to find they take a long time to cultivate and they're very rigid. And so a lot of companies, they product owners and just simply can't get them.
Now, um, I just want to finish by looking at the main. Thinking the critical thinking, the first principles by which this product owner is working and it's really the harmony let's, let's look at, uh, things you've seen in, in the product team and in the business on a day to day basis, there is a balancing act and it could be between what your UX expert is telling you and your tech experts telling you, and as well, the business owner.

And so the, the, the product owner is the intersection of that conversation. They're the conduit, the balancing act, and the decider said differently. They are balancing between user needs, business requirements and technical constraints. Or we, if we want to take this a level higher, they are weighing up is what we're building desirable for users.
Feasible through technology or viable for the business. And as I elevate it, what you will begin to sense is that the product owner has one of the most exciting roles because they get to play in these three distinct areas. And on the flip side, the greatest challenge is you have to play in those three areas, and this is not easy.
So. This is why you have to have this paradigm. Really clear in your mind, you have to have the right sort of behaviors in order to do it because everything comes to the product owner. Sometimes teams tend to have their, a business analyst is the product owner. Sometimes the UX person, sometimes one of the developers, what I've actually found that if it is a big.
To medium sized project that the product is I own a row is a dedicated role outside of those other key contributor roles. It is a standalone role. So. If you want a North star around how to build your career, I'd say if you love product and you love being in those worlds, head for a product owner, if you are a product owner, please know this is such a tough job to weigh up left and right brain things to weigh up a technical constraint versus does this really add up for the business and Hey.

Are we building something that uses love, but I will tell you this one thing that if you, if you can really adopt this paradigm and help with managing the backlog and stakeholders and the release management, you'll truly be. An absolute huge contributor to your organization. You'll create a ton of value.
You'll help us go out into the work and build products that are really worth building products that really solve a problem. So they go, that's the first crucial role in a agile scrum team. I'm going to take you through a whole bunch of them in subsequent episodes of the show, but I hope you've enjoyed delving into the key role, the product owner in agile and scrum teams.
So that's it for the botto...