By: Jessica West
What is Digital Product Ownership?
Digital product ownership is the process of developing and launching digital products that meet the needs of users and businesses. Digital product owners work with a cross-functional team of designers, developers, and other stakeholders to bring digital products to life!
Challenges of Digital Product Ownership
One of the challenges of digital product managers is keeping up with trends and technologies. The digital landscape is constantly changing, so digital product owners need to stay up to date on the latest trends and technologies to develop products that are competitive and meet the needs of the end users. Another challenge is managing stakeholders. These stakeholders include businesses, investors, and end users. This can be very challenging when there are competing priorities. The most challenging thing about digital product ownership is maintaining deadlines, staying within the budget, and dancing around unexpected setbacks. Digital product ownership is sort of like being a circus ringmaster. You have to juggle a lot of different things, including users, businesses, and investors. You also have to keep the show running during the setbacks.
Joys of Digital Product Ownership
On the flip side, you get to work on innovative products. It is also a joy to get to collaborate with talented people from a variety of disciplines, people like designers, developers, product managers, marketers, technical writers, cybersecurity experts, and hopefully many more. Probably, the rewarding aspect is seeing your ideas come to life. It is incredibly gratifying to see a product you have nursed from ideation to reality. It is even more gratifying when you see it helping the users it was intended for. Often these digital products that are made, make a real difference in people’s lives, by making things easier, more efficient, and more enjoyable.
Stakeholder Relationship: The Heart of Business Agility Planning
In order for this show to begin the product owner and the stakeholders have a very important duty in business agility planning. The product owner is responsible for representing the needs of the stakeholders to the development teams and ensuring that the team is building the right product. The stakeholders are anyone who has an interest in the success of digital products, including the customers, end users, investors, and executives.
In the planning phase, the product owner and the stakeholders will work together to answer some basic questions. Why are we doing this? What is the purpose of the product and what is the problem it is solving? What is the opportunity? What is the market potential and how will it benefit the stakeholders? How do we measure success? What are the key metrics that will be used to measure the success of the product?
Once these questions have been answered, the product owner and stakeholders will work together to develop a product roadmap and backlog. The product roadmap is a high-level plan that outlines the key features and milestones for the product. The product backlog is a prioritized list of all the work that needs to be done in order to build the product.
One of the main duties of the product owner is to communicate regularly with all the stakeholders and keep them updated on the progress of the product, and any changes to the plan, as well as risks and challenges. Manage their expectations by setting clear and realistic goals, be transparent and honest about the challenges, and be responsive and professional when there are questions or concerns.
The next step is to identify the end users, their needs, pains, and the current solutions available to them. This can be done with a few different methods. User research is a method that involves conducting surveys, interviews, and focus groups with potential or existing users of your product. Another method is market research, which involves researching the competition, industry trends, and customer needs. A great place to learn about users' needs is the existing customer support tickets. This is an easy place to get feedback, common pain points, and areas of improvement directly out of the customer’s mouth.
TEAM Up- Together Everyone Achieves More
Once there is a good understanding of the customer's needs, existing options, and the stakeholder's wants, the next thing a good product owner does is develop a team. Some companies outsource all the team members, while others have an in-house team. This team is comprised of developers, responsible for building the product, including the front-end and back-end development. There are often representatives from branding, making sure that the digital product carries over the brand identity. A marketing expert, and a cybersecurity expert, as well as UX Designers, Technical Writers, and a Quality Assurance person.
Most businesses do not have the budget to hire such a robust team in-house, they will often rely on the digital product owner to cover many of these roles, or they will outsource the roles the product owner needs assistance with. Building a strong cohesive team is essential for the success of any digital product. When team members work together on aligned goals they are more likely to produce high-quality work and achieve their objectives.
Once the team is in place, they can start to work on designing the product to ensure end-user usability. This process involves conducting user research, and ideation. This is the process for generating new ideas, product owners use techniques like brainstorming, mind mapping, and design thinking to produce their initial ideas. They then validate these ideas by getting feedback from the team, as well as with user interviews, usability tests, and surveys.
Development in a Nutshell
Once a team has validated the ideas and determined the priority of the backlog, they then create wireframes and prototypes. The point of doing this is to make sure the final product is user-friendly and easily navigated. Once the high-fidelity mockups are approved, they go off to the development team and the product owner will determine which user stories will be built into each sprint. At the end of the sprint, the owner will test all of the user stories that were developed and prepare the team for the next sprint.
Agile Methodology
The most important job of the product owner is to determine the order of operations. Using Agile Methodology, the product owner will break down the work into small tasks, this will make it easier to estimate the amount of time and effort required for each task. The product owner will then plan the scope vs. time to make each item and the quality of the final product. One way product owners do this is with a technique called Weighted Shortest Job Frist (WSJF). This is a prioritization method that takes into account the value of the work and the time it will take to complete. This helps agile teams to prioritize the backlog, and ensure they are working on the most important job first and delivering value to the customer and stakeholders as early and as often as possible.
Flexibility and adaptability are essential in Agile Methodology. Agile teams need to be able to respond quickly and effectively to change. This is because the requirements of a product can change frequently, and the team needs to adjust the plan accordingly. There are a few ways Product Owners and Agile Teams handle this. The first is short sprints, keeping the springs to roughly two weeks, allowing the new features to be delivered quicker. The product backlog is a prioritized list of all the work that needs to be done. This list needs to be updated regularly so that the team can always focus on the most important work first and adapt the plan as needed. Another reason agile teams need to be flexible is they receive all the feedback from stakeholders, customers, and the team itself, this helps them identify areas of improvement and implement them accordingly.
Measuring Outcomes
Once the product is launched the product owner will likely measure the outcomes and follow up with the users. This is done with a variety of metrics including user engagement, customer satisfaction, and revenue. The product owner can also measure the outcomes with surveys, interviews, and customer support tickets. Using data to make informed decisions is essential for any digital product owner. This feedback is used to improve the product in later iterations and develop new features.
If you are looking for a digital product owner who can help you develop and launch successful products, I encourage you to contact me. I would be happy to discuss your specific needs and how I can help you to achieve your goals.
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