Thanks for sharing your question, Akin. A product is an entity that creates specific value for users and possibly customers, as well as the business, as I explain in more detail in the article What is a Digital Product? For example, if the identity and access management software you provide allows the users to access their data or a specific service and if it protects the company from cybercrime, then it is likely to be a product in its own right. If that’s the case, it would benefit from having a product owner who manages it. Hope this helps!

Thanks for sharing your feedback and question, J. If the marketing technology stack is a collection of third-party products, then you don’t need a product team in my mind. Instead, you should be able to administer the products as part of the standard IT work. If you do develop them in-house, consider setting up a product team for each offering. Does this help?

Thanks for sharing your question, Eveline. I would regard the ITAM process owner in your scenario as a stakeholder and member of the (extended) product team. If other products also rely on Microsoft 365 licenses, then it would make sense to manage them centrally. This might be done by the ITAM process owner, as you suggested. Hope this helps!

How would you divide responsibilities with ITAM, IT asset management? For example, I, as PO, have a contract with Microsoft for the licenses of M365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio etc). But the ITAM process owner manages the software assets. Is the process owner working for me? Or am I working for him and should I transfer the contract with Microsoft to him?

Kind regards,
Eveline

Hi Roman, thank you very much for your feedback. I was hoping you hadn’t had a chance to talk to him yet. And if you ever met him, you could convince him of your way of thinking 💪.

Hi Andi,

I’ve met Marty Cagan, and I am aware of his views on the product owner role. While his work and mine are aligned in many ways, I disagree with his take on the product owner role. I believe that it is based on how he has seen the role applied rather than how it is intended. Admittedly, the product owner role is often misunderstood and misapplied, as I write in the article. The same can be said of the product manager role, though. But this does not mean that the role per se is wrong or ill-conceived. I discuss the two roles in more detail in this video: https://youtu.be/dagL0eO7AkA Hope this helps.

Thanks for your feedback and question Vinish. If you decide to bundle the two products and combine them into one, I recommend having one person in charge of the newly formed product. If managing the new product is too much work for a single individual, then involve additional product people who own parts of the product like one or more features. I would encourage you to validate that bundling the two products is the right strategy, as the two products seem top address different target groups. An alternative would be to create a platform that standardises the UX/UI and possibly encapsulates shared assets (services/components). Hope this helps!