Ah yes, the Product Owner. The mythical creature who’s supposed to bridge the gap between "what the business wants" and "what the devs can actually build without sacrificing their souls." If you’ve worked in tech for more than five minutes, you’ve probably encountered a PO. If you're lucky, you've seen a good one. If you're like the rest of us, you've spent too much time decoding vague JIRA tickets written like riddles from a drunk wizard.
Let’s set the record straight: the Product Owner isn’t a glorified backlog janitor. They’re supposed to be the voice of the customer, the arbiter of value, and the person who says no to dumb ideas. Think of them as the gatekeeper to your dev team’s sanity—and your product’s relevance.
Here’s what a Product Owner should be doing:
1 Defining a clear vision – If the PO can’t tell you why the feature matters in under 60 seconds, they don’t understand it well enough. Full stop.
I once had a PO who used a whiteboard to diagram the user journey for a feature nobody asked for. After 15 minutes, we still didn’t know what the feature did—but we learned a lot about their artistic skills.
2 Prioritizing ruthlessly – Everything can’t be priority one. If it is, then nothing is.
I’ve had POs hand me a sprint backlog with 13 "critical" items. When I asked which was most important, they just blinked at me like I’d asked for their Netflix password.
3 Translating business-speak into dev-speak – "Optimize cross-channel synergy" doesn’t tell anyone what to code. Cut the fluff.
Real story: A stakeholder once told our PO, "We need more stickiness in the customer journey." Our PO came to us and said, "So... we're adding a pop-up?" Close enough, I guess.
4 Saying NO – The PO’s power comes not from the ability to say yes, but from the spine to say no to scope creep and pet projects.
I watched one PO stop a VP mid-request and say, "We can do that, but it’ll delay launch by two weeks. Still worth it?" The VP backed off so fast you’d think the feature was radioactive.
5 Staying engaged – You can’t disappear after sprint planning and then re-emerge like Punxsutawney Phil during the demo.
We had a PO who treated the sprint demo like a surprise party. Every. Single. Time. Watching them react live to features they didn’t know existed was... entertaining, in a tragic kind of way.
The best POs I’ve worked with? They’re curious, decisive, and allergic to BS. They don’t just nod along in stakeholder meetings; they challenge assumptions, ask the tough questions, and protect the team like a bouncer at a VIP club.
But let’s be honest—most orgs don’t set POs up for success. They get saddled with too many products, zero decision-making power, and a calendar that’s more packed than a Black Friday checkout line. Then we wonder why roadmaps go off the rails.
If you’re a PO reading this, here’s your cheat code: prioritize outcomes over output. Your job isn’t to deliver more stuff—it’s to deliver the right stuff. Be the person who asks, "What problem are we solving?" so your devs don’t have to guess.
And if you're a dev? Buy your PO a coffee (or a stiff drink) if they're doing it right. Trust me—they're catching more arrows than you think.
Ship smart. Stay sane. And may your backlog always be more than just a graveyard of stakeholder whims.
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