A product owner’s job is — perhaps paradoxically — not as much about owning the product (or solution) as it is in owning the problem.
Yes, building a product as the solution to a problem is the ultimate deliverable. But too often, product owners and product managers overly focus on the solution, which can detract from the end goal of solving a user’s problem through software.
Successful product managers adopt a laser focus on solving users’ problems as the central tenant of managing the product. Suppose a product manager can understand and clearly articulate a user’s perspective to a Scrum team. In that case, successful products are ultimately jointly owned by the product team — in conjunction with the designers, architects, and engineers that build them.
Learn how product management can drive the effectiveness of your team
In our 21 years working with a variety of organizations, the most successful projects pair a client-side product manager with one or more Forte product owner(s). This partnership ensures a more effective and efficient translation of the product manager’s epic-level definition of value into a well-formed backlog by the product owner. The collaboration exists so that your software isn’t just “built the right way,” but also results in tangible value to your customers through delivered software.