“If you cannot measure what you build, you will just be depending on who is screaming the loudest and using your gut feeling — which is not a good thing long term.” – Njegos Ilic
This is a Product Owner week, where we interview Njegos Ilic, a product owner, and cover the same topics we usually cover, but from the PO perspective!
Njegos defines product owner success through three pillars: the ability to measure product bets, deep knowledge of the industry and product, and the humility to admit mistakes and be challenged. The measurement piece is central — without it, he argues, you’re flying blind, making decisions based on opinions rather than evidence, reacting to whoever screams loudest rather than what the data shows.
But Njegos is honest that not every environment makes measurement easy. Some companies lack the tooling, the culture, or the historical infrastructure to set up proper analytics. In those situations, he turns to user interviews as the next best thing — getting direct feedback from users, even though he acknowledges that opinions are still limited without data to fact-check them against. His most powerful suggestion: invite the whole team to user interviews, not just the product trio.
When developers hear directly from users, they connect to real-world problems, and conversations during refinements become richer and more grounded.
In this episode, we refer to The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick and Shift: From Product to People by Michael Dougherty and Pete Oliver-Kruger.
Self-reflection Question: How do you currently measure whether the features you shipped actually delivered the value you expected — and if you can’t measure it, what’s your fallback?
Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Start With a Relaxing Exercise
Njegos doesn’t advocate for a specific retrospective template — and that’s the point. From his product owner perspective, he values retrospectives that begin with a relaxing, informal exercise to set the tone. Not everything needs to feel like business as usual.
This casual opening allows people to connect as humans first, which opens them up to think differently about what they learned during the sprint. Njegos is candid about the reality: some teams love icebreakers, while others find them childish and just want to get to the point. His advice is to sense the pulse of the team and adapt.
The format matters less than whether it creates an environment where people can be honest about what went well, what didn’t, and what to improve. A Scrum Master who reads the team’s vibe and adjusts accordingly — that’s what makes the difference.
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About Njegos Ilic
Njegos is a motivated and forward-thinking Product Manager and Agile Project Manager with experience in fast-paced SaaS environments. He empowers teams through leadership and guidance across product development. With a Lean mindset, he simplifies complexity, delivers in small, testable increments, and leverages rapid feedback loops to prioritize outcomes over output.
You can link with Njegos Ilic on LinkedIn.
Eli Goodman has been working on software teams for 17 years. He’s been a full-stack developer and engineering manager at both large and small companies, including Etsy and Headspace. A few years ago, Eli transitioned to product management and is now the Head of Product at Tuple, a remote pair programming service used by companies such as Figma, Shopify, and many others in the software industry.
Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! 
Matthias is a Project Manager, turned Programmer, turned PO, turned Client Service Director with a varied background in different industries from Mechanical Engineering to IT Agencies. Throughout all of his journey, Agile has been part of his work life, even before he knew what Scrum was.