A Digital Team is not just made up of Marketing, IT or Sales representatives. It is made up of all the expertise needed to quickly develop end-to-end digital products and services, creating user and business value. The role of the Product Owner (PO) is crucial within this team.
What is important as a PO at the start of a change process, when everything is still vague, uncertain and in full swing? In this article I will teach you more about this.
How do you start?
1. Composition of a Digital Team
Start by building a small digital team to initiate change. This team works physically outside your organization on purpose.
The Digital Team consists of at least a strategist, Art Director, UX Designer and a UX Researcher, who are often externally appointed. You, the PO, come from within the organization.
The PO is essential for the input of specific market, product and organisational knowledge and the involvement of stakeholders from within the organisation. In some cases it is not possible to have all stakeholders involved immediately, due to certain internal sensitivities. Preferably there is interim contact with stakeholders from various departments, business units and from different countries.
Closely connected to the CEO
It is essential that you as PO have a good relationship of trust with the CEO. This relationship is necessary for the progress, the motivation of the team and the success of the transformation. This means that there are no endless documentations and accountability meetings, but short lines.
Make sure you and your team are given a main goal. For example: 'We want to quickly launch an innovative concept in market X'. In addition to the main goal, you may also be given more strategic principles, which are probably still in development at the start. For example: 'Acquisition within X years' or 'From decentralized to central model'.
The small Digital Team can usually only move independently for a short time. Marketing, Corporate Communications and IT are often quickly involved, because digital has a direct impact on them. They have to work differently, hand over things, and so on. The collaboration between all parties involved does not always go smoothly. Be laos telegram data aware of this. The final responsibility for the Digital Team therefore always lies with the CEO - and not with the other disciplines.
2. Start from the user, not from IT
The Digital Team must think from the user's perspective when creating added value, and not from existing IT solutions or a certain history.
As a PO, you will start working on the question: 'Is there a real problem with the user in market X that we can solve?' The team uses design sprints for this. A perfect way to systematically apply the design thinking methodology.
During multiple design sprints, user validation will be performed to ensure that user value is created. As a PO, make sure that the CEO is present during a number of user validation sessions.