Thanks for sharing your question P.Shah, and no, that’s not the way the product owner role should be applied. As a Scrum product owner you should manage the product, set product goals, and prioritise the product backlog. But you should not have to do what the stakeholders tell you, as I explain in more detail in the following articles:

Six Types of “Product” Owners
5 Tips for Saying No to Stakeholders
Stakeholder Management Tips for Product People

Hope this helps!

Could you please help me out/give me some advice? I just started a new role as a Product Owner but I do not work in Scrum, my team lead is always checked out and we do not have regular weekly meetings at all. In fact my team lead is not at all involved in the kind of work I am doing. Which means that I have to interact with the stakeholders without really having much training/someone to ask questions to regularly. The only process that I am really part of and that falls into my role is managing the backlog. However, when it comes to user stories or making business decisions, I am not involved at all. Furthermore, I am expected to do a lot of setting up work – for example, setting up fonts or colors for our website, which is primarily based on a CMS. Here is how the process normally goes: Stakeholders tell me to ‘set up’ a page for them on the CMS, which I manually have to do, sometimes without clear guidelines, and then if the work is too hard for me, I get to ask a developer and coordinate with the developer for the set up to happen.

Is this a normal way of working as a PO? I find it very confusing and vague, and without a team lead or training I am often unsure about what to focus on. The CMS I am working with is something I should learn in and out, but my motivation is low because I am also expected to do some of the actual technical work in the CMS.

Since this is my first role as a product owner, the information I find online confuses me even more (but also sounds more interesting) because it is not the actual work that I am doing.

Could you please give me your take/view on my situation?

Thank you!

P.Shah

Hi Prabhat,

Thank you for sharing your question. I am not an OpenAPI specialist and hence struggle to recommend a specific book. But as I mention in the article, you should have the technical skills required whenever you look after a technical product. I therefore recommend that you either decline to take on the product or acquire the necessary skills before you start managing it. The latter may require that you learn to program and create web services.

When it comes to describing technical products, I prefer to work with a modeling language like UML. User stories are great at capturing how an end user interacts with a product. But they are not well suited to describe interfaces / APIs. Please see my article “Why User Stories Fail” for more information.

Hope this helps!

Sounds like you have a plan. Good luck with your career in product management!

Thank you for your quick response to address my query.

I went through your response/article and wanted to let you know that I have been working in one IT life science project for last 2 years for one pharmaceutical MNC client to enhance their IT system functionality where they capture all expenses. I am responsible here to work as project manager/Scrum master. Though I don’t have as such any product management experience; However, in this project I also got an opportunity to work as Junior product owner to shadow the product owner from client side where I was requested to understand system requirements either with product owner or directly by end business users, maintain the product back log, writing EPIC, user stories over JIRA tool with a direction from product owner. So I feel that I am developing my tactical skills in this project as of now and can showcase this work experience as Junior product owner with addition to certification. Once I switch my career as Junior product owner, I am sure I would be getting other opportunities to develop my rest of the skills to prove myself as best product owner.

Any thoughts from your end would be much appreciated.
thank you.

Hi Navdeep,

Thanks for your feedback. I am glad that you found the article helpful. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you if becoming a Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) will help you secure a product owner position without prior experience. This will depend on the specific job you are going for. But I’d like to recommend the following: Assess your current product management knowledge, for example, by talking my product management test. Then compare your knowledge and skills to the requirements stated in the job ads you are interested in and determine the right measures to close any gaps. This might involve taking a CSPO class. Additionally, you might want to look for product owner jobs in the data warehouse space, as you have lots of relevant knowledge in this area. It tends to be challenging to move into product management and simultaneously work with new products or in a new industry. Finally, you might find my article “The T-Shaped Product Manager” a helpful read. Good luck!

Great Article and thank you for sharing with us. Just need your point of view on my one query.

I have around more than 17+ years of IT experience that includes project management, Software Design/Development across large number data ware housing IT projects with use of ETL and database management skills. I am also Certified Scrum master and have been performing scrum master role in my current project for last 2 years. However looking at my experience level and as per latest IT market trends, I wanted to switch my carrier to adapt product owner role. Though I worked in various domains like Banking, Life Science but I don’t have any working experience as product owner. So If I do Complete Certified Scrum Product Owner certification, Would it help me to get entry to work as product owner without any prior experience? your answer may give more insights to me to take next step.

Hi Benjamin,

Thank you for sharing your feedback and question. I wouldn’t regard a lack of technical knowledge as a showstopper for playing the product owner role unless you want to manage a technical product like a platform that is integrated with other assets to create a larger, end-user facing product.

But you may want to assess your current product management knowledge, identify strengths and weaknesses, and determine the most helpful learning and development measures, based on the job you want to move into, if you haven’t done so. One way to do this is to take my product management test. You may aslo want to read my article “The T-Shaped Product Manager“, which discusses the skills product people should have.

Hope this helps!

Great inspiring article! Can you give me some advice, please? For the past 3 years, I’ve been working as a Project Manager in my own small construction company. I don’t have any formal PM qualifications (although I am degree educated), but I’ve gained a vast amount of experience in designing and delivering construction projects to domestic customers, running multidisciplinary teams of contractors, and delivering projects from inception to completion.

I would like to get into an Agile Product Owner position. Although I have little knowledge of the technical side of programming – or the software development life cycle – I do have experience of understanding customers needs, running projects and teams and a good understanding of business in general.

With a background in such a different domain, do you think I could realistically take on the PO role? Would I likely be considered by an employer? Is there anything I can do to improve my position, such as taking Agile accreditation?

Thanks for your time and help.

Ben