I've always loved many aspects of project management, so when Work at Play move to an Agile workflow, the role of Product Owner was a perfect fit. My background in technology has been an integral asset in this position as I'm able to quickly take intricate user experience ideas and translate them into actionable, bite-sized pieces for developers. Over the last two years, I've become Work at Play's Lead Product Owner and have mentored younger designers in the role.

What is a Product Owner?

As a Certified Agile Product Owner, I help define and become the keeper of the vision of the product. This ensures that one person maintains an understanding of the project’s underlying strategy and its key objectives right from discovery, through design, development, and deployment. In most circumstances, I stays on after release and am involved monitoring the product to see how it’s being used and adjusts accordingly.

The Product Owner is also the voice of the client on team, ensuring their needs are met. The role is a natural fit for a User Experience Designer because understanding user needs and unifying them with business goals is core to what we do on any project. 

What does this mean on a day-by-day basis during the design and development process?

I begin by defining a roadmap and backlog for the entire project. This initial backlog is defined at a high-level to allow for changing requirements.

On the sprint level, I work collaboratively with other disciplines to break larger epics and features down into digestible portions developers and designers can execute on. These are vetted through project stakeholders to ensure the correct set of features are being worked on in priority order. Once a sprint begins, I continue to work on designs and preparing future sprints of work for the team.