POV on Product Ownership from the Director of Product at Google with Richard Seroter

The Agile Coach Podcast

Today, we feature the best moments of our conversation with Richard Seroter, Director of Developer Relations and Outbound Product Management at Google Cloud. He discusses what it means to be a product owner and how to work with engineers, end users, and everyone in between.

Richard shares how to exercise leadership as a product owner and work with stakeholders not as a boss but as a member of the team. He also talks about using data points to prioritize feature decisions, instilling self-governance and accountability, and promoting continuous improvement in the team.

HIGHLIGHT QUOTES

A product owner leads through influence - Richard: "A good product owner leads through influence. They don't have direct authority. They don't have a management staff of people. The engineers don't report to them. But you are leading often by showing that you have their back. And, for me again, that was a very underrated aspect that if you're a good product owner, the engineers think you are covering for them in a good way."

Don't procrastinate and always ship at the end of each release - Richard: "I don't think you're going to have a good time if you don't force your team to ship after the end of each release, each sprint, because if you don't ship, what's really easy to do? Let's just roll it into the next one. If you have that failsafe, you're going to use it versus like nope, we ship at the end of each release."

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