Episode 61: The role of the Product Owner w/Reza Farhang

Jun 8 / Petra Färm
The circle is now complete – The first ProductBeats’ show more than a year ago was about the Product Owner or more specifically the 7 Signs that will tell you as a product manager that you have the perfect product owner. The product manager role has been around for ages, was first introduce in the 30s as the Brand Men at Protecter & Gambler. A few years later Hewlett Packard evolved the role to be the customer voice inside the company. Then with the agile revolution in the early 00s the product owner was established to feed the agile beast. A role close to the development team who can do the backlog refinement, user story discussions, prioritizations on a daily basis.Today these roles and even the name of the roles look different at all companies and organisation but what is the same is that product management is never done by a single person. You will need to build a team or a network of roles supporting you to get your product out there. And not only to get it out but to build a loveable and sustainable product. So whatever background you have the moment you step into product management you need to hone your leadership and team skills. It’s a soft role with hard deliveries and we love it.
Is it just me, or do we all need to go back to school?