Product Ownership - A New Era

Products and product management have become hot topics in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic threatening to bring many organizations to bankruptcy. The reality of products being the center of an organization has finally kicked in, leaving executives to scratch their heads whether they should pay more attention to product delivery, rather than project delivery. The short answer is yes, they should.

And here are five basic arguments why organizations should pay more attention to products:

1. Products are directly linked to customers and serve their needs

2. Products, unlike projects, provide sustained revenue

3. Customers consume and pay for products, not projects

4. Long term teams are consistently more performant than short term ones

5. Organizational benefits come from the ability of products to deliver value to customers

The journey of product delivery and product management is not new to practitioners, but it required a crisis to be recognized as instrumental in value delivery. With that, product custodians, or product owners as we call them in agile environments, need to organize in a new generation of professionals who care about their customers and the organizations they serve. A new generation of product owners ACHIEVE success beyond agile frameworks, by focusing on the relationship between products and customers.

Here is what ACHIEVE means:

• Agility in business: build a mindset around the product and long-term delivery

• Crash the challenges: proactively solve problems and challenges organizations have

• Hone the team: build high-performing teams that are motivated and committed

• Iterate to make it happen: use iterations as a method for continuous delivery and feedback

• Enable effective ownership: master the 5Ps of ownership to connect with the product

• Value sustained delivery: identify value in all processes and build efficiencies

• Excel as product owners: create an environment of excellence and best results

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It is time for a reboot of the business world. We need new ways of working and thinking about our products and product delivery methods. It is time we, product owners, start to add value to a world of customers that need reassurance the product we develop is sustainable and valuable. It is a new world, it’s a product world, it’s a new generation of product owners who care about customers.

Peter