Product owner at the bank - who is he and what can he do

    Product OUNER. Product owner. Productologist. PO. The position, which is often considered a synonym for "Project Manager", is a number of tasks and responsibilities are quite similar. Vladimir Davydov, Head of Development of Digital Channels and Products of the Mass Business Block , told VDavydov who the product is in Alfa Bank’s understanding, what kind of person he is, what he can do and how he relates to his team . The product must be an entrepreneur. , must burn with what he does, for him working on a product is not just a hired job for which he receives money a couple of times a month. A product is an integral part of his life, without exaggeration it can be called his brainchild. He burns his own business, cheering for the team, always wants to be the best. Is always. Everywhere. In everything.









    This is a unique person - he combines incongruous things, he is a client's lawyer, a businessman who constantly thinks about income, a caring but strict leader for his team, and, if you like, an evangelist of the product and the employer's brand as a whole.

    This is who the product is and what competencies it should have: (clickable)




    Product Qualities


    Professional skills of the product owner are closely connected with the product creation cycle.

    - Ability to conduct qualitative and quantitative research. The product explores everything and everywhere. Clients, the market, business, news, world experience and best practices, find growth points, come up with new solutions that help people solve their problems.

    The key value of this skill is to be able to find what people really need, what will really be in demand, to understand what value this potential product or feature will bring to the business.

    - metrics(they probably can also be attributed to the research part). This is generally the basis of the basics of grocery work. Any product owner should be able to build a metrics tree - you need to understand exactly how any change in the product affects the achievement of the main goal of the business. The product must understand the cross-influence of metrics, must constantly analyze data, understand the reasons for the ups and downs of any indicator, and be able to influence the behavior of each metric.

    - Formation and hypothesis testing. The logical outcome of any study is a set of product hypotheses. What should be done with hypotheses? That's right - check. Quickly, with an understanding of success criteria. In order to do something well, you need to know what exactly you do, and what are the criteria for this “Good”. If the hypothesis has confirmed its viability, you need to be able to quickly bring it to mind.

    - Work with the team . Product creation. We are all agile evangelists here and have chosen the scrum framework as, in our opinion, the most effective methodology that allows us to quickly deliver value to consumers. Therefore, we have a fairly standard set of artifacts - dsm, pbr, sprint planing, demo, retro ...

    Constant work with the team in this mode allows you to immerse yourself in a single vision of the product, an understanding of values, to unite to achieve common goals and, as a result, to show super-results both in terms of speed and quality.

    - Product launch on the market . This is a big job, which implies a full scope of preparatory work - from scripts for the call center to the design of external communications. Why does the product also have a headache about this? Yes, because no one knows their product better than a product, and no one but a product can build communication better. The product understands who, what, and how to say, so that the product is bought.

    - Stakeholder management.A stakeholder is any person in a bank who can influence your product. From a top manager to an employee providing support. You can write a separate article on this point :) The main rule is to divide stakeholders into clusters, form expectations for each group, and then manage them. Drive on an ongoing basis.

    For example, for TOP managers, expectations will be about a specific Value for business - tell Value about it and tell about progress on an ongoing basis.

    For colleagues who want to do something with your product, there should be a transparent, public backlog with an understandable prioritization model. Then everyone will understand why his “Wishlist” is the 100500th in line, and not the first.

    For support staff, the expectation will be a notification of a planned release no later than 3 days before opening to the Client, with a preliminary training event - do not forget about this.

    Product Responsibility


    Product - a businessman who makes money. All questions, all responsibility, decision making, budget, strategy, selection of people - all this on it.

    Now we are advocating just such an approach - this is another round of evolution. We went a rather long way in the formation of a product institute (Alfa-Bank was the first in Russia to apply Agile flexible development methodologies, editorial note).

    Digit VS Bank


    It was one thing when we talked about products in the digital products division. Everything is somewhat simpler there - the guys were in fact responsible only for the front-line part of the product. So that the client is comfortable and understandable, so that everything works. After the implementation, metrics were collected, they influenced the final result only by optimizing the funnels, and not by processing the product. Although in fact, they could not buy the product, because the loan rate is high or the scoring model is too rigid.

    Now, when we are talking about the product of the OUNER at the Bank level, everything is more complicated - the product is responsible for its product from beginning to end. Manages all expenses related to it, determines the conditions for the provision of the product, he is fully responsible for PnL and has all the necessary powers to bear this responsibility. The guys have full cross-functional teams that can solve absolutely any problem in the bank.

    Goals


    The goals of the whole team are single (business). A product defines the goals of a business that automatically become its personal and team goals. The team should share these goals, people should be charged for the result. Each team member needs to ask himself a question every day - what do I do that affects the achievement of the goal? It is important.

    I promote a position when a product fully trusts its team and does not go to much more competent people with tips on testing-design-development. Product must do business.

    This is a matter of responsibility.

    There is a testing specialist - therefore, he is responsible for all errors that arise during the work with the product. The product should not conduct testing.

    If the client did not find any button (or it is inconveniently located) - this is the designer’s problem, his area of ​​responsibility.

    The responsibility for each jamb within the competence lies with who owns this competency within the team. Otherwise, you can always say to the product “well, you saw ... well, you yourself looked” - with this approach, the feeling of one’s own responsibility for what you are doing is completely killed. This must not be allowed.

    But we must not forget - with this approach, the product head is in the hands of the team, because the final demand for the result is all the same with PO. This forms a team. In my opinion. Real team.

    Blacklist of qualities


    Above, I described the qualities that I consider important for the product. But there are those who (in my opinion) put a cross on the product. At least for me during the interviews.

    - The attitude to your team as a workforce, as a

    product resource at Alfa Bank, is the people who form each of their special forces teams. A team of people where everyone is ready to cover each other. This is the team, not the gears in the mechanism.

    - Does not see the difference between a leader and a leader.

    For me, a product should not want to be a leader. He must be a leader. Leader - leads people, leader - leads people along. That is the key difference.

    - Does not share a working culture

    It is important. We try to select people so that the level of working culture they have was about the same. To make them comfortable working with each other. If it’s uncomfortable for you to work with colleagues, communicate with them and generally come to the office, it will be, frankly, difficult to work.

    - Lack of logical thinking

    In principle, it is sad at all for any job. But for the product - it’s critical. He sets up metrics and analyzes them. He must understand how the work of the team affects the business as a whole. Must understand and track all relationships. If this is not about him, then he does not really understand what he is doing, why, and how - this is a dead end.

    Products in Alpha


    Products have almost zero turnover. If a person is close to us in spirit, if he shares our culture, he does not come to work, try to start the project and leave.

    He launches a project, monitors its development. This is his own small business, for which he is responsible. And parting with him is not so easy :)

    People often ask me how to become a product, because they don’t teach them? Well, firstly, they teach, and secondly, the main desire. In general, students and beginners of POs are a special caste. Truly crazy people, without fear in their eyes, without the experience of falls. This is unlimited potential - the future lies with them. I believe in such people, they are close to us in spirit, and they sincerely want to make cool products.

    Of course, I will not give yesterday’s student a piece of a live business or an entire product. But I will help him grow inside the company, and in a year or two everything will work out.

    We already have successful examples when a person came to the bank for an internship, and now he is a full-fledged product in the bank, and he is engaged in a rather important product of Alpha.

    Today I have about a dozen products, each of them has a couple of teams.

    But tomorrow such people may be 20. We are a big bank, we have many products and we always look to the future. PO vacancies are open now, if our approaches are close to you and you want to try yourself as a product - go for it.

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