The product workers: working together successfully as product owners

In their podcast series, the product workers have already spoken several times about the cooperation between product owners and stakeholders, users and other owners in different roles. However, there are always contexts in which product owners work together with other product owners.

Such contexts are encountered in larger organizations in particular, in which several teams, each with their own product owner, work together on a large product: Large products are sometimes tailored in such a way that different product owners are jointly responsible for sub-products with their teams.

Many bakers for one cake: (How) can that succeed?

In practice, this scaling with several product teams for a higher-level product often results in one or the other problem. For example, the overall product no longer appears to be of one piece because different people with different perspectives have developed it.

If each partial product has its own (partial) product backlog, joint prioritization becomes complex. The metrics of the respective sub-products are often not completely related. Many problems that arise when product owners work together require a solution.

Possible approaches to solving the problems are improved communication and the exchange between the product owners of an overall product. What is said so quickly then repeatedly presents those affected with challenges when it comes to working together. This is exactly where the product workers come in with this episode and hope to provide a few approaches, experiences and impulses on how cooperation can work better.

Some earlier episodes of the podcast “Die Produktwerker” also fit the topic:

• Björn Schotte in conversation with Tim Klein: “Working as a product owner in a scaled environment”
• Oliver Winter in conversation with Dominique Winter: “The Product Owner Team”

The episode and further information can be found under “The product workers: working together successfully as a product owner”.