Your first 100 days as a product owner

Petra Ivanigova, Delivery Coach Lead, shares a 100-day journey to master being a product owner and lead the team to launch successful spacecraft-like missions with strategic vision.

June 20, 2024

8 min read

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Petra Ivanigova

Petra focuses on helping teams turn their ideas into amazing products. She thrives on tackling complex challenges, refining processes, and driving innovation. Like an alchemist, mixing passion with purpose and connecting the dots between concepts.

Day 1–10: Getting Started

As a product owner, get to know your product, stakeholders, business model and industry domain including direct competitors.

Understand your role: Dive into what’s expected of you. Read project documents and consider finding a mentor. As a product owner, you’re more than a project manager, you’re a leader, a strategist, and a customer advocate. Your decisions impact the entire product lifecycle.
Meet your team: Get to know their roles, communication styles, and build trust. Strong relationships will turn ideas into something truly extraordinary. Engage with engineers, designers, and stakeholders. Understand their motivations and challenges. Ask stakeholders for 3 things that are holding the product back from becoming a fantastic feature for your customers. It’s also useful to get the same feedback from your team.
Set up your workspace: Organize physical and digital tools for smoother work. Set up project management tools like Jira or Trello and communication channels like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Make sure you have easy access to resources like product databases and documentation. A well-organized workspace will make your job as a product owner much smoother.

⚡ Remember, you’re not just a project manager, you’re a leader, strategist, and customer advocate.

Day 11–20: Building Your Roadmap

As a product owner, understanding your users is key. Imagine exploring their experiences, uncovering problems, and empathizing with their needs. Additionally, it’s important to recognize whether your organization is data-led or product-driven. In a data-led company, decision-making is guided by analytics, whereas a product-driven approach places a premium on innovation and user experience. This shapes your product strategy and sets the stage for success.

Understand your users: Conduct user interviews, analyze data, and empathize with their needs. Equally important is considering the perspectives of key stakeholders across departments like marketing, legal, sales, and more. These insights lay the foundation for crafting solutions that truly resonate.
Craft a strong product strategy: Use market research reports, customer surveys, and competitive analyses to gather insights. Keep up with industry trends, competitor actions, and changing customer preferences. Remember, your roadmap is flexible, it should evolve as you learn and grow. Make sure you understand how your product fits into the bigger picture and how you’ll measure its success. Understand your analytics platform, metrics and key metrics for your product.
Before making your roadmap, discover the opportunities that matter to your key customers. Use these insights to craft experiments that help you hit your targets and test your ideas.

Now that you’ve set the stage, it’s time to create a high-level product roadmap. This roadmap outlines key features, release timelines, and dependencies. Here’s how to proceed:

Visual roadmap: Use a visual roadmap tool for a clear overview. Visualize your product journey, including major milestones, feature releases, and critical deadlines. Share this roadmap with stakeholders to ensure everyone understands and supports the vision.
Involve stakeholders: Collaborate with stakeholders, from executives to end-users. Their input is invaluable. Discuss priorities, trade-offs, and alignment with business goals. Define feature ownership and responsibilities to avoid confusion and promote accountability.

Next, prioritize your backlog:

Business value: Prioritize tasks based on their impact on business goals. What features will drive revenue, improve user experience, or enhance market positioning?
Effort: Consider the effort required for each task. Break down big features into smaller, manageable tasks using techniques like user story mapping.
Risk: Assess the risk associated with each task. Address critical risks early in the roadmap.

📌 Your roadmap is not just a plan, it’s a dynamic guide that keeps everyone on track toward shared goals.

Day 21–30: Planning in detail

As you refine your product journey, let’s focus on the details. Imagine you’re preparing for a space mission, every step counts.

Refine your backlog: Take a closer look at your backlog. Break down large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones. Each task should have clear acceptance criteria for completion.
Estimate effort: Estimate the effort required for each task. Use story points or hours. This ensures your team fully grasps the scope of work.
Establish your process: Define your team’s workflow and roles (product owner, scrum master, development team). Regular meetings (sprint planning, daily syncs, reviews, retrospectives) keep everyone aligned and improve collaboration.
Plan your first sprint: Set SMART goals aligned with your product vision. Your first sprint lays the foundation for future sprints. Keep your team focused and working towards common goals.

🔍 Remember, attention to detail now sets the stage for successful launches later.

Day 31–50: Delivering your first release

As you approach the midpoint of your journey, it’s time to deliver your product to the world. Imagine standing at the launchpad, ready to release your creation.

Executing your sprints: Keep your sprints on track by addressing any issues quickly. Monitor progress, adjust course if needed, and maintain momentum.
Review and refine: Conduct sprint retrospectives at the end of the sprint. Reflect on what went well and what didn’t. Capture specific examples. Use a retro format like the 4Cs (Continue, Change, Challenge, Cut) or the timeline technique to structure the discussion and ensure actionable insights are generated.
Ship your first release: Launch your product or product feature to the world. Collect real-world feedback from users. Measure key metrics like user engagement, conversion rates, and NPS. Use tools like product analytics platforms and customer feedback platforms to gather this data. Analyze the results to understand how the product is performing and identify areas for improvement.
Continuous improvement: Utilize feedback from users and performance metrics to iteratively improve your product. Address user concerns promptly and enhance features based on data-driven insights. For effective A/B testing, start by deciding what metrics you want to track, like conversion rates or user satisfaction. Use tools like online calculators or software to figure out the right number of users needed for reliable results. Set a duration for your test, and randomly divide users between two versions (A and B) to keep the test fair. Once the test is over, analyze the results to see which version did better. This is a powerful way to make informed choices and enhance your product.

🚀 As a product owner, you’re not just delivering a product, you’re launching a mission.

A person thinking about a product strategy

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Product Ownership (Sketch by Petra)

Day 51–100: Scaling your impact

As you continue your journey, imagine your product expanding its reach, like a ripple effect in a pond. Let’s explore how you can make a lasting impact:

Expand your backlog: Continuously gather new requirements and refine existing ones. Learn more about customer needs and market trends. Use customer feedback, feature requests, and market research insights. Keep your backlog relevant and impactful.
Evolve your roadmap: Adjust your product roadmap based on market insights, customer feedback and changing business priorities. Use techniques like roadmap pivoting and prioritization matrices. Ensure your roadmap aligns with strategic goals.
Lead and influence: Develop your leadership skills. Communicate your vision effectively, inspire your team and stakeholders. Align teams around common goals. Make tough prioritization decisions. Use techniques like storytelling, visualization, and data-driven decision-making to drive impact.
Reflect and adapt: Regularly review your progress and seek feedback. Celebrate wins and learn from failures. Evolve your approach based on insights. Consider tools like a product owner self-assessment or 360-degree feedback for continuous improvement.

⭐ As a product owner, you’re not just building a product, you’re shaping an experience.

Key Takeaways

Congratulations on your first 100 days as a product owner. Here’s a quick recap of your key insights:

Lead with vision: Guide your team like a mission director, not just managing but leading as a strategist and advocate for your customers.
Team dynamics: Understand your team’s roles and communication styles. Keep your workspace organized with tools like Jira or Trello for efficiency.
User focus: Deeply explore user experiences to tailor your strategies. Include insights from cross-departmental stakeholders for comprehensive planning.
Strategic planning: Stay updated with market research and adjust your product roadmap based on industry trends and customer feedback.
Detailed execution: Define and refine your backlog with clear tasks and goals. Establish a workflow that aligns with your product vision and plan sprints strategically.

Armed with these insights, you’re well-prepared to tackle the challenges ahead. As a product owner, keep evolving, innovating, and guiding your team towards success. Strive for excellence and set your goals even higher.