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Product and Service Owners in AppQuality

DISPLAYTITLE:Product and Service Owners in AppQuality

We talked about PO and SO in a BRUM, you can find the recording of the presentation here: BRUM presentation (40 min viewing time).

Anyway you can find a recap below with all the relevant information.

The Product Mindset​

The problem is that the product is not simply a set of features; the product is the way you talk about the product, it’s the way that you acquire customers, the sales process that you go through to actually close a customer, the experience that someone has when they’re going through that process.

That’s all part of the product.

Process is the scaffolding for productivity. It’s not a replacement for smart people or customer-driven insights, but provides the framework in which those smart people can work as efficiently as possible. How much process is needed will be a function of the stage of the product and the experience of the team. For smaller, highly skilled teams, a very loosely defined process will suffice.

So, the trick to creating a great product team is to think of them as the product.

How to achieve the product team?​

We introduce two new figures that will help us to focus on the product and to guide the innovation: Service Owner and Product Owner. Product Team

Service Owner​

The Service Owner is responsible and has a clear understanding of:

  • The proper platform usage and features
  • The price list
  • Services processes
  • Quality of every single service inside his/her unit
  • The delivery process
  • Creativity and problem solving abilities
  • Some Domain knowledge
  • The community guild management

SO becomes the touch point between users working on the same service, a figure with a total comprehension of the service that can link togheter all the pieces and drive the growth.

Product Owner​

As described in the Scrum Guide, a Scrum Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team. [..]

The PO is also accountable for effective Product Backlog management, which includes:

  • Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal;
  • Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood

POs can prioritize the backlogs and the dev team's activities according to the SOs needs.

Example​

We have a PO for each dev team; we have a SO on the QA services: Massimo Calleri.

Massimo is the touch point between all the needs/problems/ideas/ecc of the QA service, so he'll talk with CSM, Sales, Community Members, Accounting, ecc (through help-center basically, but also through direct messages) about QA.

Most of the issues could be solved easily thanks to a better communication and a SO focusing on coordinating improvement.

There will be a part of the issues that needs to be managed by the devs, in this scenario SO and POs need to collaborate to understand the needs and furtherly plan the implementation needed.

QA service example

Current Service Owners team​

At this time the SOs team is composed by:

  • Massimo Calleri as QA Functional Service Owner. As such, he is responsible for all the Functional services.
  • Roberto Sorrentino as UX Service Owner. As such, he is responsible for all the User eXperience services.
  • Maria Laura Rizza as Market Insights / CX Service Owner. As such, she is responsible for all the Market Research and Customer eXperience services.
  • Marco Minucci as Whitejar Junior Service Owner. As such, he is responsible for all the Whitejar services. Massimo Calleri supports Marco on this role.

Here you will find the full AppQuality services catalog: AppQuality services catalog.