4 things I have learnt while being a MarTech product owner

The year 2020 has been unprecedented in many ways. For me that has been to take up writing about topics that I am passionate about. Sharing a few of my thoughts on Marketing Technology Product Management and Ownership.

Ownership

As a Product Owner, you own the vision of the product and are fully responsible for it’s success or it’s failure. It is up to you to set the objective and goals for the product and the metrics against which the success of the product will be measured.

This also includes having a 360 degree view of the dependencies, risks and opportunities that the product has created across the organisation. Managing and tracking these regularly is key to the long term success of the product.

Engage, Analyse and Implement

• Engage: As a product owner, it is very important to look outward across user groups, tribes, business units and other stakeholders to ensure that you have captured their pain points and challenges first. Based on these challenges, appropriate solutions can be provided, within the usability, functionality, training and other categories.
• Analyse: Ensure that your product backlog is documented and subsequently prioritized, based on portfolio and organisational priorities.
• Implement: The themes or user stories can then be provided to the configuration/ development teams to be implemented within the platform. From here the changes should go through the test strategy of unit, system and user acceptance testing.
• Release Management: Follow strict protocols of releasing into pre-production and production environments.
• Change Management: Appropriate levels of training is one of the most important aspects of user adoption for the product, and hence careful consideration should be given on who needs to be trained on what topics/ modules, with what frequency.

Take people on a journey

A project or program or initiative is successful when everyone working on it operate with a single vision. To achieve that vision, it is very important that the Product Owner takes employees, contractors and vendors on a journey. Only if everyone on the team have the feeling that they are adding value to the overall vision, will they be passionate about the work and it’s outcome.

Communicate, communicate and communicate

You have done only half the work, if you do not capture your audience’s attention. People are busy in their own priorities, so communicating to them in the way they understand and consume information is one of the most important aspects of product ownership.

This can be done in several ways like roadshows, newsletters and showcases. Preparing a stakeholder matrix to ensure that the most appropriate information is sent to the right person is the first step to being heard. Finally, the aesthetics and content of your communication is key to grabbing a person’s attention. Nobody wants to read if the content does not add any value in their already busy lives.

Have you got any insights you’d like to share? Let me know.

Disclaimer: These are my independent thoughts and nothing to do with any organisation that I have been associated with in the past or present.

Published By

Ashish Kapoor

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.