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The job of a product owner isn’t a cakewalk. You have to set a proper structure and protocol for your team to follow and lead your team to develop new solutions and products for the consumers by meeting deadlines promptly.
Tools Every Product Owner Should Master To Make Working Easy
As a product owner, you take complete ownership of your product by knowing it completely from the inside out, understand what the consumer wants, and convey that information to your team.
But in the era in which we currently live, where you most definitely won’t be the only person who can do a particular job, you always have to do something different to step the game up by a notch and stay ahead. In this way, you also make your work easier for you.
Here are a set of methods, tools, and skills that you should master to make your job as a product owner easy and streamlined.
Agile Product Management
Agile Software Development or Agile Product Management is a product development method where you deliver in small bits rather than in whole. In other words, you assess the consumer requirements and develop the product in small increments through frequent iterations.
Here, you will have to analyze the demands frequently. The process will encourage fast production and generation of the product without compromising its quality, ultimately leading to customer satisfaction.
Scrum
Scrum is Agile’s subset and is one of the most widely used methodologies by product owners. Agile’s iterations are termed as ‘Sprints’ in Scrum, and each sprint has a period assigned to it, which typically is around 1 to 2 weeks.
Just like Agile, small bits or increments of the product can be delivered to the consumer, using the Scrum method, rather than the consumer waiting longer for the final product.
Tools Every Product Owner Should Master To Make Working EasyScrum can be beneficial for you in the following ways:
- As you are delivering the product in small bits regularly to the customer, you can instantly get feedback from them. Thus, you can make changes immediately so that the end product is highly efficient and matches the customer’s needs.
- Scrum is also friendly to the pocket. This is because you are making the necessary changes as soon as they are identified rather than making amends right at the end when the product was supposedly ready for delivery.
- It also improves your team’s productivity, quality of the product, and helps you and your team stay on track and ahead of your schedule.
You can learn more about Scrum by going through some of the best product owner certification courses that will also help you learn more about the product capabilities and prioritize value, quality, and user experience.
The best tools can help a product owner be capable of planning and creating tasks within a project, assigning these tasks to the right people, and tracking each task’s progress. Some of the tools that allow you to do so are:
VivifyScrum
VivifyScrum helps you in managing your product right from scratch to its complete generation. It is very intuitive to use, and you can easily adjust the tasks that have already been set based on the changes that are to be made.
VivifyScrum even offers a scrum board that can be used to manage sprints that we discussed above. It gives easy access to the product backlog and the sprint backlog.
ClickUp
The best part about ClickUp is that it offers a trial period that enables you and your team to try first and see if it matches your style. This tool is also very user-friendly as you can easily create tasks, monitor their status, and check on the estimated time of completion.
ActiveCollab
ActiveCollab is another project management tool that aids you plan, organize, and track your product development during its different stages. You can even plan the activities and assign a task to the right personnel. It also allows the members of the team to communicate with each other within their workspace.
Jira
Jira is a really powerful tool that is loved by all its users. But if you are leading a small team, then it is best not to consider Jira as it can get complex, leading to confusion.
Lucidchart
Lucidchart is a web-based tool that allows you to create and draw flowcharts and diagrams that can be shared amongst your team members. It also enables you to make changes effortlessly.
Hotjar’s Heat Map
If you have created a website for you and your team, then this tool can be like gold for you. Hotjar’s heat map tells you what users do on your website by showing you which areas are most concentrated on and which areas are mostly ignored by the users.
Add-ons
Now that you have learned all about Agile and Scrum and all the tools that are at your disposal which can help you in your job, there are few more things that you can also do.
Certification Courses
Right now, the demand is high for Scrum and Agile methodologies. Top companies and firms cannot afford to waste their time, money, and ideas on product owners who cannot meet their demands and produce great products.
This is why it is extremely crucial for you to up your credits to show how competent you are at your job. This is whereproduct owner certificationcomes into the picture.
These certification courses help you learn more about Scrum and how to incorporate them into your work. Doing these courses makes you a certified ScrumMaster that is capable of leading a Scrum development team.
Hence, these certified courses show your customers how well you can perform at your task by showing your true potential.
Acquiring Soft Skills
Soft skills help you in becoming a great product owner. A few of them are listed below.
- Delegation
- Communication
- Resolving conflicts
- Thinking outside the box
Conclusion
Being a product owner can sometimes become very strenuous. In times like these, you should always keep your head held high and know that you can solve any problem that comes your way.
The tools and skills mentioned above are some of the ways that can make your life a little easy. How you incorporate them and adapt them to your style is all up to you. But at the end of the day, if you want to become successful at what you do, you must never forget or abandon the habit of learning new things.
