Seye C.

Background

I am Seye A, 32 years old, male, and working as a Project Manager at a leading Banking firm. My background is in Public Health where I have a Master in Public Health. Over the last 10 years, I have worked in different roles within project and delivery management across different banking firms. My goal is to transition from a PMO Manager to a Product Owner

Problem

My problem statement is as follows:

• I am struggling to secure a Product Owner role both within and outside my current employer

• I’m trying to transition from a Project Manager to a Product Owner

• But I lack the knowledge, work experience and interview skills required to secure a new role as a Product Owner

• Because I don’t have any opportunity to learn and work as a product owner

• Which makes me feel sucked in a role that I know longer enough and losing on potential increased income

Decision

My decision statement is as follow:

• In order to transition from a project manager to a product manager

• As Seye, I signed up for ITyDATA’s Product Owner Career Transformation Program

• So that:

  • Learn – learn the fundamentals of Product Ownership

  • Experience – gain practical working experience as a Product Owner

  • CV Coaching – review and get feedback for my CV

  • Mock Interview – learn how to sell myself in a product owner interview

Project Success Story

Step 1 - Creating a Purpose Statement

The first product I work on was Product Website. Here is a step-by-step guide on how I applied myself as a Product Owner for Product Website

Figure 1 - Purpose Statement for Product Website

Step 2 – Creating a Team Canvas

The second task I completed was collaboratively creating a Team Canvas using Miro – team name, goals, roles & skills, values and rules & activity

Figure 2 - Product Website Team Canvas using Miro

Step 3 – Conduct Competitive Analysis using User Story Mapping

My third task was conducting a competitive analysis for success story journey across 3 key competitors. I analysed user persona, user activities and user tasks for each competitor. I used Miro for this task

Figure 3 - Competitor Analysis for Success Story using User Story Mapping

Step 4 – Creating Success Story User Story Map for ITyDATA

My fourth task was creating a user story map for Success Story for ITyDATA in Miro. I created a persona, user activities, and user tasks.

Figure 4 - Success Story User Story Map for ITyDATA

Step 5 – Creating Business Model using Lean Canvas

My fourth task was creating a business model for Product Website to drive innovation and growth – Customer segments, early adopters, problem, existing alternatives, unique value proposition, high-level concept, solution, channels, unfair advantage, key metrics, cost structures and revenue steam. This analysis was done using Lean Canvas

Figure 5 - Business Model for Product Website using Lean Canvas

Step 6 – Translating ideas and analysis in product backlog items for the Scrum Team

I created and prioritised product backlog items for the Scrum Team in order to create business value by improving user experience by implementing success story. I experienced an end-to-end sprint – sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective. In addition, I conducted backlog refinement session and feedback sessions with stakeholder. Value delivery was managed using Jira

Figure 6 - Product Development using Jira

Step 7 – Creating Product Increment – Success Story

The success story capability was successfully developed and deployed on ITyDATA website

Figure 7 - Success Story - List View

Figure 8 - Success Story - Detailed View

Outcome

Being on the Product Owner Career Transformation Program and delivering increment – Success Story has been a transformative experience. Going from idea to analysis to design to creating product backlog items to working in a Scrum Team and delivering business value created a deeply valuable Product Owner. With this experience and the coaching – CV and interview coaching, I believe I can secure another Product Owner role.