We start this episode by learning what are some of the typical challenges that CTO’s face when working with a growth-focused company and product. Mickey shares about the need to consider the product as a whole challenge, not only engineering, but also marketing and business aspects like customer cycles, customer acquisition, etc.
Key Product Owner skills, from a CTO’s perspective
When it comes to critical Product Owner skills, Mickey shares with us some of the key skills, and personality traits he looks for when working, and selecting Product Owners to work with his teams. We discuss the need for the Product Owner to have an entrepreneurial mindset and work on developing their product from both the technology, as well as the business perspective.
We also discuss some of the analytical skills that PO’s must have, or learn so they can follow the progress of their product, and how data can help them make better decisions.
Product Owner skills for product and business growth
Owning a product is not all that Product Owners do, they also must be able to find and exploit growth opportunities. In this segment, we talk about what makes a great growth-focused Product Owner. From understanding and measuring every step of the customer journey within the product, to working with sales and business development to evaluate strategies to keep customers engaged, and getting value out of the products they develop. Ultimately, this means that Product Owners must be aware of, and familiar with Product-Led Growth.
In this segment, we refer to the book Mastering Product-Led Growth by Mickey Alon.
Engineering products for growth, surprising lessons for Product Owners about how to engage engineering organizations
One of the key lessons from this episode is that we must consider product and business growth as an engineering problem, not only a sales/biz development problem. In this segment, we explore some of the techniques and perspectives that Product Owners can take advantage of to be able to design their products for growth. We discuss the dangers of thinking of the Product as a “collection of features”, and the need to learn to engage and enable engineering teams to bring their specific kind of innovation (technical innovation) to the product ownership process. “Empowering engineers to innovate” becomes therefore a critical skill for Product Owners that work with growth products!
About Mickey Alon
Mickey Alon is the founder and CTO of Gainsight PX, the Product Experience Platform. He is a serial entrepreneur focused on designing, building and launching innovative products that help drive business outcomes. Mickey co-authored Mastering Product-Led Growth – a book on building product-led growth strategy. He’s held several executive positions at other companies, including being the CEO and co-Founder at Insightera.
You can link with Mickey Alon on LinkedIn.
