Four Ways an Outsourced Agile Product Owner Delivers Value
Let’s say that you have an idea about a product that represents a business opportunity. Maybe you need to increase user engagement, or improve your current product experience, or increase revenue. You have allocated one full Agile development team for the product, and now you are considering how to fill the Agile Product Owner role. The Product Owner must drive the vision for the product, define the requirements, and deliver value to the customers. The best Agile Product Owners are skilled Agile practitioners, and they also:
• Demonstrate strong curiosity
• Are outstanding communicators
• Love resolving problems
• Facilitate shared understanding between business and technical stakeholders
It might seem like the ideal Agile Product Owner would be someone you already have available within your company, who has deep knowledge of the product and the culture. However, you might find that an outsourced Product Owner offers unexpected benefits.
1. You get the expertise you need
The product creation process varies tremendously, depending on factors such as company culture, industry, and current market situation. As an outsourced Agile Product Owner, you develop a breadth of experiences you might never get otherwise. One day you might be digging deep into the needs of a financial services B2B platform, and the next day you could be on the hunt for B2C healthcare trends.
Needs and users are different from product to product, but in the end, the main goal is to deliver true value, whether for the business or the customer. To be most effective for every product build, outsourced Agile product owners apply best practices to understand the business strategy, drive a product vision, create a product roadmap, and manage a product backlog.
A senior-level outsourced Product Owner brings years of experience in working through different challenges to the table. Imagine the hurdles for a Product Owner that is starting a new team, defining a vision for a product that is innovative and unfamiliar to the team, and helping adopt an Agile approach into the organization. All at the same time. In this complex situation, an outsourced Agile Product Owner with solid experience would be able to help the new team to get up to speed, provide direction for the product, contribute to consolidate the Agile practices, and educate other people about the Agile approach. It takes a depth and breadth of experience as an Agile Product Owner on many different kinds of projects and in different organizations to do all this successfully.
2. You get the right amount of engagement
Often, when Product Owners are chosen from within an existing team, they can be pulled in different directions. They may continue to fill some or all of the responsibilities in their previous role. Or it may take time to transition those previous responsibilities to another person. The end result is that the Product Owner comes with limited availability to truly support the product team and focus on delivering value to the business or customer.
If you outsource the Agile Product Owner, you can get the engagement your team and your stakeholders need. The Product Owner will be available to the client and the team, be able to clarify questions, and solve issues expeditiously. This focused and continuous communication and collaboration are crucial to avoid costly misalignment and ensure project success. The right amount of Product Owner engagement translates to:
• Increased predictability (for example, more accurate job size estimations)
• Improved communication with the team
• Shorter incident response rate
• More accurate forecasting
• Increased team motivation
• Higher product quality
3. You get a fresh outlook
Few things kill innovation better than thinking that the way things have always been done is the only way to do them. No matter how strong and high performing your team, introducing a new, experienced Agile Product Owner from outside your organization will introduce fresh ideas and different ways of thinking that challenge the status quo and encourage everyone to learn and grow. In this time of rapid digital transformation, an outsourced Agile Product Owner can help accelerate needed change, and challenge the traditional way of doing things.
4. You get access to a supportive Agile community
An outsourced Agile Product Owner should come with ready access to a supportive Agile community. When the Product Owner is a member of a vibrant community of certified, expert Agile practitioners, including other Product Owners, Agile coaches, and Scrum Master, you get access to the community’s shared best practices and lessons learned throughout the years. You get that community’s endorsement of your Product Owner’s skills and experience. You’ll know your Product Owner is up-to-date with current Agile product management trends, and is a respected subject matter expert.
Get the best of all worlds with our expert Agile Product Owners
If you’re considering outsourcing an Agile Product Owner, Gorilla Logic Product Owners offer the expertise, engagement, fresh outlook, and access to a community of expert Agile practitioners you need. We take great pride in our strong Agile culture. Our Product Owners belong to a focused Agile Practice, and they contribute significantly to that Practice through different initiatives such as workshops, digital tool development, internal coffee talks, and Communities of Practice (known as CoPs).
Additionally, you can be sure that Agile Product Owners are always learning, attending global Agile seminars, workshops, and e-learning sessions. They manage our Agile Practice initiatives through PI Planning sessions, as prescribed by the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe). We are a SAFe Silver partner with Scaled Agile Inc., and our leaders are Certified SAFe® Program Consultants (SPCs) and Certified SAFe® Agilists (SAs) with vast experience leading change in different organizations.
Within our Agile Practice, we also have people who are Certified ScrumMasters® (CSMs®) and Certified Scrum Product Owners® (CSPOs®) through the Scrum Alliance, and Professional ScrumMasters® (PSMs®) and Professional Scrum Product Owners® (PSPOs®) through Scrum.org.
Partnering with our Agile Product Owners offers many invaluable benefits:
• Deep experience in multiple organizations and in multiple industries
• Expertise with many different technologies
• Specialized knowledge certified through worldwide recognized institutions
• Continuous access to a robust, vibrant Agile practice
An outsourced Agile Product Owner from Gorilla Logic is a professional that knows the challenges of software development, and has the expertise to turn them into opportunities that deliver value for your organization.
