How to become a product owner: the guide

How do you become a product owner? 

• Master's degree in computer science, 
• Master's degree from a business school, 
• Master's degree inengineering.

Added to this is the requirement for Scrum certification training, from among the following: 

• Scrum Alliance, 
• Scaled Agile, 
• PMI, 
• Scrum.org.

What is Scrum? We'll get to that in a moment. The only thing you need to know for now is that this training course enables you to master the core of the profession: project management using the Agile method.

In other words, the implementation of an evolutionary project, which rearranges itself according to changing customer or user expectations and external constraints (market, budget, etc.).

What skills do you need to become a product owner?

• Know how to use a product backlog (list of information on users and their needs), 
• Communicate customer needs to a team,
• Understanding the product life cycle, 
• Integrate design, launch and maintenance costs, 
• Act as a link between a multitude of stakeholders, 
• Reading data from Big Data, 
• Front-end and UX skills, 
• Understanding e-business. 

Like the project, which is Agile, its skills evolve according to the product being developed. Of these, two in particular should be explained: 

• Exploiting the product backlog, 
• Communication with stakeholders. 

What is the product backlog?

The product backlog is a list of tasks to be carried out in order to achieve the objectives of a product developed for a clearly identified target. This list can evolve, depending on market conditions, changes in prospects' needs, budgets, etc. 

It can be explained by two acronyms, DEEP and PROUVE:

Who are the stakeholders? 

When designing a product, you need to rely not only on the scrum master and the team of developers, but also on : 

• Solution users, 
• Sponsors,
• Buyers, 
• Investors, 
• Accountants.

In simple terms, accountants draw up budgets for product development, launch and maintenance (the product life cycle). The accountant will then look at sponsors and investors, who will cover part of this budget, and product users, whose feedback he will summarize. He will then be responsible for synthesizing all this information and making it available to the whole team. 

What is the SCRUM method?

SCRUM is a methodology based onagility. The aim is to build a project quickly, while allowing it to evolve as external constraints change.  

To achieve this, the scrum methodology relies on the ability of 4 entities to work together: 

• The scrum master, 
• The product owner, 
• The scrum board, 
• The squad.

It's no longer necessary to introduce the scrum master and the product owner. The squad is simply a team of developers, working in "Sprints". Each sprint corresponds to a development phase of the project, limited by a deadline. At the end of each "sprint", which lasts a maximum of one month, something must be presented to the customer so that he can appropriate and evaluate it. 

The scrum board is the dashboard used to manage the project, particularly during the sprint , or at the end of each sprint if several are required to complete the project. 

This method is implemented through software such as Jira, for creating the backlog, coupled with Slack, to improve communication between team members, or Google Workspace, for spreadsheets, slides, etc. 

What are the career possibilities for a product owner? 

A product owner can apply for 4 positions: 

• Chief product officer, 
• Scrum Product, 
• Head of product, 
• Product Manager.  

What is the role and mission of a product owner? 

The product owner is not a deus ex machina. He doesn't operate outside any conceptual framework. Quite the contrary, in fact. The team is fully integrated into a product development framework. 

The most famous is probably the Scrum framework, but there are others, such as : 

• Zoho Sprints, 
• Akiflow, 
• Workstack, 
• Gmelius, 
• Etc. 

The role of the product owner is to make the rest of the development team understand what the product needs to be to meet customer requirements, through the Product Backlog. 

To achieve this, the product owner must perform the following tasks: 

• Analyze prospects or users, 
• Understand their needs and expectations, 
• Respect budget constraints, 
• Approach sponsors, 
• Find investors, 
• Find buyers, 
• Make all issues comprehensible to the team.

How much does a product owner earn? 

35,000 to €71,000 gross per year: that's the salary of a product owner, depending on experience and the size of the company employing him/her. 

How might the product owner profession evolve in the future? 

The product owner is largely dependent on the Scrum method for managing Agile projects. The question is whether this framework will endure over time, or whether it will become obsolete in the eyes of companies. 

At present, there seems to be no sign, however faint, that Scrum's logic is going to give way, or be swept away by a competing methodology. The product owner profession therefore seems to have a bright future ahead of it.