product owner and ux designers

Product Owner and UX Designers: Great Team or Just Business?

Lukasz Banach

Who am I?

Who is PO?

• UX Designer?

• Devils advocate?

• No one?

• Project Manager?

• Backlog owner?

What PO should do?

Provide the best possible business value for the organization.

Key PO skills

• Know UX…a bit

• Communicate well…a lot

• Engage people…all the time

• Gather a feedback….internal and external

Key PO skills

Understand that other people (eg. UX) can bring complementary competences to the Team helping

fulfil best ever project objectives.

Let’s define UX…Team

• Designers?

• Flow makers?

• Analysts?

• Researchers?

• Detractors?

It has to be a TEAM

UX Team in Scrum

• Not well defined

• Working often in waterfall mode

• On X parallel projects

• Trying to catch the “Iteration train”

UX Team in Scrum

• UX People are POs

• Gathering feedback, dealing with stakeholders, guiding the development of the product

There is an competency overlap very often

How to deal with that?

How to deal with competencies overlap?

First, UX and PO should understand that they’re not unicorns.

They have different perspective which should be treat as complimentary, not opposite.

Second, UX and PO should understand that both they’re fighting because often they’re scared to

lose ground in the organization.

How to deal with competencies overlap?

Third, UX and PO should be in charge of product dev, both wanted to deliver stunning product.

How to deal with competencies overlap?

• Too rare communication between PO and UX • Ego driven approach • Different business approaches • Lack of wider business perspective from PO • Lack of process perspective from UX

How to deal with competencies overlap?

• Hiring just a Product Manager and split the role of UX designer between him/her and a graphic designer

• Hiring just a UX Designer and giving him/her the competencies of a Product Manager

• Clearly defining the role of both and teaching them how to cooperate

How to deal with competencies overlap?

Communication is crucial

• First listen then understand and then talk • Use data-driven arguments, not opinions • Understand you’re not the smartest guy on the planet• Come with problems, not ready solutions • Be straightforward

Building a Team

• UX should be a PART OF cross functional project team

• UX should take part in project processes from the beginning to the end

• UX should establish good communication with PO

• UX should know customers, users, stakeholders and understand their needs

Build a process

Examples

UX Designers 

embody the vision of the company in the interface based on knowledge of user behavior while always bearing in mind business objectives.

A UX Designer is focused on assessing the experience of users, discussing a possible solution to their problems and designing it as a result of discussion with the team

ExamplesProduct Managers 

are masters of execution, who are obsessed with shipping the perfect product with the perfect timing. They facilitate cooperation between people with different skills.

PMs help to translate user problems and requirements into tasks. They support the User Experience Designer’s work and emphasize its importance

Be smooth

Ask questions Understand Align

Design Sprint

Think big Work in steps

EVO

There is no shortcuts. UX process needs time.

There is no ideal process.

Exercise

= use only 1

= use only 1

Summary

• UX an PO are overlapping so often • You should respect each other to build a great Team • Start communicating better • Build the process flow and iterate on that.

Thank youlukasz@codility.com