If You Only Need to Know One Thing as a Product Owner…

… what would it be?  There is a really insightful thread on the Certified Product Owner LinkedIn group from last week.  I thought it would be beneficial to capture the best response and share the excellent wisdom from experienced Product Owners all over the world.

• Involve your stakeholders.  Be transparent towards your Team.  Always put your end users first.
• Write good user stories with even better acceptance criteria.
• Every client’s desire should not make the requirements list.
• Communicate and communicate again.  Be organized.  Always remember your stakeholders; all of them.
• Know your priorities.  Be clear about your vision for the product.  Be there for your team.  Communicate.
• Be the visionary and articulate that Vision to the Team.
• Actively communicate.  Get better understanding from the business side.  Let the scrum team be.
• Focus on customer benefits, not on product features.
• Learn to say “No”.
• Listen, communicate and constantly share and update your product Vision!
• When talking about features, focus on the why and not the how.  Let the team come up with the solutions.
• Empower yourself, your Team and your Stakeholders with vision, clarity and transparency!
• Listen to your ScrumMaster.
• Go to where the customer is to get real data on how they use your products.
• Be decisive, collaborative and not afraid to fail!
• Be inquisitive. Your developers are a great resource.
• Be part of the Team and understand what your Team does.  Be available for them and patient in ensuring they have all the information they need to build the product you want.
• Start listening and learn how to create value.
• Be empathetic towards your end-users and make sure you are the advocate of the users, the rest of the other things (product adoption, word of mouth , revenue, profit, etc.) will quickly start falling in place automatically.

If you have others to add, be sure to include them in the comments below.