The Product Owner is the most misunderstood role within organizations and API Teams, but they are the fuel that runs the whole API engine.
If you’ve ever read one of our strategy eBooks or participated in one of our events like Adapt or Die, we are fanatical about Outside-In. For those that don’t know what this means, let me take a minute to explain it. Outside-In is the concept of understanding what the end user needs and building a solution that provides that data using APIs. No more and no less. The reason this concept is important is that historically IT builds solutions to provide all the data they have and tell the end users to figure out what they need. Kind of like a data dump and a pile of data you need to sort through to find out what it is and the context of how to use the data. This never worked, but IT had limited time and resources to go through their lengthy process so they erred on the side of everything so they didn’t get any more requests and they can move onto the next project.
Well times have changed and APIs has made the process of iterating to add information to existing APIs a much easier and fast process…assuming the data is available. So Outside-In is about delivering what is needed.
This is where the Product Owner comes in. They are the voice of the end user and they bring this into the API team with detailed requirements that are prioritized for the team to build solutions. The Product Owner is passionate about their end user and the small little nuances to make improvements is something they obsess about. They are the end users Advocate and the API Team respects and follow the lead of the Product Owner. Sometimes, Product Owners will try new things with customers based on a hypothesis and then they see the reaction and iterate if the hypothesis starts to play out or kill quickly.
But the Product Owner responsibilities don’t end there. In fact, they are vital to the ongoing velocity and lifeline of the API Team. So what do we mean? Well to start, they build the vision and excitement about what the end user needs and the impact this will make on the end users job and impact for the company. Providing context to the API team, opens the team into being part of the solution and may have valuable feedback for the Product Owner to improve the solution. The other responsibility is to be available for the team to answer questions. Developers run into technical challenges or maybe the data they want is actually not in the level of detail needed. The Product Owner may need to further explain the requirements or they may need to change the requirement based on new information from the developers. And in the end, the Product Owner reviews the results of the work to confirm this meets the end users needs.
So hopefully, this gives a better view into why the Product Owner is so critical to the API Team and why this needs to be a full-time role. Don't tag this onto the responsibilities of someone already on the API Team. Find someone passionate about end users. Someone that is curious. Someone with vision but able to dig into specifics. Someone willing to take risks and they're okay failing on occasion. Someone that is a great listener. Someone that loves to innovate!
Share your thoughts...
The other key skill of the Product Owner is the ability to make decisions. They need to be empowered to make a call when a decision needs to be made and not have to consult a committee.
100% agree. Product Managers, like any role, are hired because they do their job well and we trust them. If you don't think that you can empower your Product Manager to make decisions, then you probably don't have the right person in the role.
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