The false comfort of “Strategic” Decisions by Product Owners

As a product owner, you need substantial reasons why your stakeholders should buy in.  Avoid words like “strategic”.  It provides stakeholders with false-comfort that they are doing the right thing for the company. Ensure you can explain the rationale. Provide compelling reasons why, as well as, the trade-offs in the decision.

By changing the conversation from ‘it’s strategic’ to being able to articulate if it (A) keeps current clients happy, (B) gets clients to do more with us or (C) allows the company to open new markets, allows leaders to determine if it avoids loosing clients, gets more revenue with less cost basis are you leveraging existing clients (which can be a finite strategy) or opens up new markets.   Be clear on the outcome.

The conversation is framed for stakeholders to understand questions in trade-offs. (A) Is it expensive to make clients happy? Can we make them happy? If not happy, how much burden does it provide our client support teams? (B) It allows organizations to know if the feature is harder to acquire more sales – always a little easier with existing clients but also a finite population (C) Gains competitive advantage but may require more investment to acquire clients.  This gives the stakeholders a better understanding of gains versus trade-offs.  They then have a better sense of the consequence of their decision.

Continue to ask —  ‘why am I selling this idea’, ‘what if no one buys this idea’, and ‘does another idea give us more gain for the organization’, ‘is there too many trade-offs to leave it on the shelf’?