Product owners are visionaries of digital products and work in tandem with development teams.
In addition to being at the epicenter of guiding a team, product owners become an important bridge between the team, stakeholders, and end-users.
A product proprietor requires several skills ranging from hard, soft, and technical skills to protect the product.
Compared to product managers, product owners are relatively new and find themselves in greater demand as traditional methods of software and project management are replaced with innovative methods.
In such cases, one would wonder if product owners would do better with the know-how of technical skills up their sleeve. In a nutshell, it depends upon the role.
For instance, to manage a digital product such as a mobile app, you would highly benefit from in-depth programming skills such as writing SQL code, Java, etc.
On the other hand, working on a technical product meant to be integrated into a larger engine model calls for another set of technical requirements.
This includes a greater understanding of software interfaces, programming in C++, and UML, among other software architecture patterns.
Mastering new skills at a younger age is less intimidating as there are comparatively lesser mental hurdles.
However, investing time and energy in learning something new is worth it, especially in today’s age, when there is no shortage of resources and learning tools.
You can start by signing up for some top-notch product owner certification courses to garner product owner competencies.
5 Ways To Improve Your Technical Skills
A product owner needs to combine preliminary, intermediate, and advanced technical acumen. This includes cracking prototype, running A/B testing, and analyzing data in Excel.
Let’s out check some of the prerequisites:
1. Learning Data Competency
As product owners, you would be spending a lot of time obtaining, collecting, extracting, and analyzing data. It is, therefore, worth the time studying dataset and mastering data competency.
One of the first steps here is to learn how to construct and run SQL queries, which is sometimes also a prerequisite for product owner jobs.
Remember, SQL is not exactly a highly advanced technology, and there are several resources to help product owners to understand SQL.
Also read the best growth hacking stories 2020 here
2. Mastering Data Visualization Software
By mastering SQL, you gain competency in understanding raw data. As product owners, you will also need to visualize the end product, which again requires other sets of skills in analytics.
In today’s digital age, there are several tools to choose from–Looker, Tableau, Google Analytics, MixPanel are some that can help to convert your raw ideas from data into impressive charts and graphs.
✋ Stop worrying about SEO and have me do it for you
PS: Ready to work with the 0.01% of all SEOs worldwide? Click here.
Getting a license for the tool, taking up tutorials to master its features are the steps that will follow.
3. Cracking Codes
By familiarizing yourself with the world of coding, you will communicate in the same language with the engineers.
Codes are necessary to bring your product to life, and as product owners, you don’t want to be spending time wrecking your brain on cracking a code.
Therefore, even as a product owner, you don’t need to learn how to code; rather, you should be familiar with the technologies. Learning CSS, HTML, and Javascript will up your game in understanding codes in any language.
Knowing the capabilities and limitations of the technology and codes will help you make smart software architectural recommendations and communicate better with your team.
4. Having Domain Expertise
Product owners should ideally possess excellent domain knowledge.
They have a reputation of being subject matter experts in the tool’s domain. Therefore you need to have avid knowledge of EMR or finance software if you wish to become a doyen of market knowledge.
Furthermore, it is also advisable to take an interest in trends like the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Product owners must also understand core concepts such as architecture principles, object orientation, design patterns, continuous integration, refactoring, and test-first.
To become a successful product owner, you have to understand the user mentality to the point of obsession and know why and how end-users prefer a certain product.
While these concepts can help you make the right decisions for your products, in-depth knowledge of machine learning and AI can help to upscale the product’s value.
Also, you can overcome common challenges of product testing, programming, and designing, among others.
Good knowledge of UVP is also essential to make a successful product owner, which takes us to the next must-have quality in a product owner.
5. Understanding Your Unique Value Proposition
As a product owner, you want users to keep coming back to you for your service, expertise, and experience, basically for your Unique Value Proposition.
Selling products without knowing and adding value to your product involves a greater risk of making your unique product into a simple commodity.
Therefore, without branding knowledge, there are chances you will become vulnerable to competition and lose customers.
As a product owner, you need to know your unique value proposition (UVP) or unique selling proposition (USP), which ultimately builds a strong foundation for marketing your products and creates strategies to engage new customers.
Your UVP will help you decide your target customers, what sets you apart from your competitors, the value of your product, how it works, and what makes it valuable and better than the rest.
Final Take
You will find the more you ace your technical game, the more independent you become and less dependent on engineering, UX, and other business analysts.
Of course, you will need their expertise in the process, but filling your technical toolbox makes you less reliant in the earlier stages of product planning and helps you investigate things independently.
Having good technical acumen also elevates your value and creditability in your organization.
Besides having a striking technical aptitude, a product proprietor also needs to plan, track work, compose, distribute, and execute errands.
Getting to know some product owner interview questions to understand your job responsibilities will help you ace your game. For instance, a product owner must have the right behavioral qualities.
You ought to be immensely knowledgeable about your product, in addition to being naturally communicative and understanding about the developer’s and customer’s shortcomings.
In your career as a product owner, you will often also find yourself stepping into the shoes of a great issue solver, an agile coworker, a comforting team member, and a leader with the final word.
For more useful guides and reviews, check these posts:
- How to get 250,000+ Visits (My best growth hacks)
- Penji review: How does it work and who is it for?
- Youtube thumbnail size & guidelines: How to make yours POP! ?
Leave your comment below and let me know what other posts would you like to read next.
