What does a Product Owner do after writing stories?
Backlog groomed? Check. Sprint planning? Check. Deployed? Check. Now what?
I’ve recently noticed that sometimes when my primary responsibilities are complete and my team is rocking and rolling I’m at a loss for what to do next. For example, I’ve just polished off some stories, finished some testing, and closed a few stories. I spin around in my chair a little, and think- now what? I’ve compiled a few things that I have found help keep me, and my team, going strong, and wanted to share with fellow Product Owners or Product Managers who may be struggling with the same feeling and are looking for a little inspiration. Here are my top 5 things you can do to stay productive.
Use your app more 💻
I guarantee you haven’t tried every possible combination of things to do in your application yet! End-users are pretty crafty- they push buttons in a different order than you expect, they put in weird characters in phone number boxes, use all kinds of browsers and devices, and they will stop using an application if it doesn’t work the way they expect it to. During typical exploratory testing you can catch quite a bit, but you can’t catch everything. This is why playing around in your own app more can be a beneficial use of time, there is always something new to discover. Really think about putting yourself in your users (or potential users!) shoes.
Get creative 🎨
A great skill every Product owner or manager should have is a bit of an eye for design. Knowing a little about the creative details will help you explain things to engineers, helping make a better product. Taking the time to put yourself in your user’s shoes to analyze where a user has to look and interact with content can save your team time in the long run. To accomplish this I would suggest a couple different things:
- Read other articles on Medium — this site is FILLED with good UX/Design practices and tons of brilliant people write about it over on UX Collective. I spend a good amount of time here getting inspiration and learning from other professionals, and newbies alike, learning the craft
- Try and conceptualize new functionalities in your application, and then design it yourself! Now I know all my UX friends are going to cringe at this, but bear with me. Try downloading Adobe Xd (it’s free) or Sketch, or any other common creative design tool and start marking stuff up. Will everything you put pen-to-paper make it into your app? Definitely not. But will it give you new ideas and give you a better understanding of the design process? Definitely.
Here’s what my current Xd workspace looks like, half of it is from my actual product designer, and half is me experimenting.
Make Data Driven Decisions 📈
Look at your data. Oh, what’s that you say?you don’t have data? GO GET SOME! I do not say this lightly, but data is one of, if not the absolute most important things you can have regarding your product. Real data should be influencing all of your decisions regarding prioritization and future work. If you aren’t using data (how many clicks does it take someone to do something, how many times does a user leave a page, how long a page takes to load, the possibilities are endless here) then you are really just guessing what would better your application. So how do you get this data you might ask? Some of the most common data points are customer feedback (set up interviews), look at support tickets, use analytics software, run SQL (it’s scary but I know you can do it), do something so that you can better understand how people are using your product.
Plan, Plan, Plan 🗓
This is a quick and easy one, but often overlooked. Prepare for meetings. Prepare that agenda. Make sure you have responses from required attendees. Prepare any documents/presentations/questions in advance so that you go into the meeting ready to rock-n-roll and not waste any time. Another thing you can do at the same time while you are looking at your calendar? Plan your days off! Big meeting on Thursday? Nice — I’m sure you’ll crush it. Now take Friday off and relax.
Looking Ahead 🔭
My last suggestion is the loftiest activity, but could be great for the overall outlook of your product. How often do you think about the vision and strategy of the company and your department? Do you know exactly how your app affects the company vision? Do you know where your app is going in five years? What is the business strategy at the President/CEO/CTO/VP level? How does this affect your product road map? Do you have a roadmap or portfolio in JIRA or Powerpoint? No? Start one! These are critical skills and questions to be able to answer if you are looking to move up in the Product Management career track.
Quick Summary 🔄
To recap, there are so many things you can do as a product owner or manager. Sometimes you have to dig a bit to find something to work on, but once you do it means that you’re doing something that is helping move your product forward!
Did you find any of these tips helpful? If you implemented any of them, let us know in the responses!
