You've found your calling as Digital Product Owner

Companies regardless of industry, are now aggressively adopting strategies centred around their customers' needs. For some, it has meant a complete rethink of what it means to be customer-centric. According to a study by Capgemini, 75% of organisations believe they're customer-centric, but only 30% of customers agree.

Welcome to the experience economy, where every customer interaction needs to compound to form a lasting impression of the brand. To this end, organisations have or are now embarking on enterprise-wide digital transformation with a keen focus on how they deliver value to customers and maintain staying power in the mind of the customer. To do this means being able to provide value quickly and frequently to customers by being nimble and agile to their ever-evolving needs. As such, more and more businesses are adopting the agile way of working and embedding it in their DNA.

More and more businesses are adopting the agile way of working and embedding it in their DNA.

As a Business Analyst, your career success now depends on how well-equipped you are to help the business orchestrate their digital transformation—transforming their operational value steam with desirable, feasible, viable and sustainable products and services. If you're already a business analyst within an agile environment, chances are that you'd have or will face your fair share of challenges in this new era. How you clear these challenges is what separates the skilled and versatile practitioner from the one whose career plateaus.

Agile's focus on value delivery to the customer has meant there is now a lot more to being a Business Analyst. Winning hearts and minds by closing the gap between the experience organisations think they provide and what the customer experiences. This is now the key battleground for competition. It's no longer about incremental improvements to keep the light on, always working on the next enhancement with little or no evidence of the value to be delivered; it's about changing the relationship with the customer and suppliers in a more fundamental way that was impossible before.

It changes the entire dynamic of how business analysis activities are performed, requiring the whole team to collaboratively perform business analysis frequently and within short time-boxed delivery cycles, also known as sprints or iterations. All the work necessary to go from requirements to deployment or release ready features and functionalities happens within the sprint. One change that you will notice is the welcomed move away from extensive requirement documents, which today hardly gets read in detail by time-pressed business owners. However, this does not mean documentation is not required, rather documentation is demand-driven and collaborative with team members deciding what is needed, how much and the level of detail best to support the delivery.

All the work necessary to go from requirements to deployment or release ready features and functionalities happens within the sprint.

At times business-unit leaders are tapped as product owners. These leaders carry the responsibility of making the development and success of the product their highest priority. Although product owners from the business have the benefit of frequent interaction with end-users, they lack many of the core business analysis skills to complement the investigative component of product ownership. The Business Analyst is best positioned to fulfil the product owner role but needs a mindset shift. No more order taking and more about sharing information. As the ultimate representative of the business and decision-maker, you are no longer the proverbial bridge between IT and the business, but the critical facilitator of co-development between IT operation and the business every day, side by side, in an ongoing process. The business analyst no longer holds the monopoly on stakeholder engagement or analysis since team members are now encouraged to speak directly with stakeholders and perform analysis supported through guidance and coaching by the product owner. This shared ownership prevents handoffs, avoiding the dependence on specialised members of the team.

As a product owner, you not only set the aspirations and vision for the product but also represents the needs to the customer and business stakeholders, co-lead decision making about features and development goals with your team.

As a product owner, you not only set the aspirations and vision for the product but also represents the needs to the customer and business stakeholders, co-lead decision making about features and development goals with your team. You should be able to live in two worlds. As such, you must have some understanding of the technology stack as well as being able to develop a strong sense of market needs and the product features that would be most valuable to customers. Your time is spent pairing your technology knowledge, customer and market insight with the engineers' feedback on the technical feasibility of specific features to create a clear development plan that separates near, mid and long-term delivery over the product's lifecycle.

#Agile #Digital Business Analyst