Coding as a Product Owner

Recently I found myself in a position whereby one of the products for which I am the product owner required some help with the technical implementation. Now, I have been a software engineer for over 20 years and, although I have had a break for the last two years or so,  this project uses a tech stack that I am familiar with.

Always being one to help, I rolled up my sleeves, dusted off my programming chops and jumped in to try and assist. It turns out that I can still code (not, perhaps, as quickly as I once could!). The experience has been an enjoyable one, getting back into the code brings things back into focus. I am now back in my product owner role, but the episode did leave me thinking about how technical a product owner should be, and can the product owner also write code on the project?

I believe the answers to the above questions are very different.

How Technical Should a Product Owner Be?

I do not know if there is some sort of measure of “technicality” of a product owner, or a threshold for this! What I do think is that having the ability to communicate on a technical basis with the scrum team is incredibly helpful.

The ability to follow technical discussions, at least at a basic level, makes life easier during refinement and sprint planning sessions. Also when talking through a feature, or when a developer needs to explain why what you are asking for is not actually possible, understanding their reasoning is a great help.

There is a downside though. You need to be able to stay impartial during the technical conversations if you are not part of the implementation team. Questioning scores on stories because you would have scored them lower, for example, is a sure way to become unpopular with your team very quickly.

I am also the product owner for a system that uses technologies that I have never worked in. This helps. I can follow what the developers are telling me, but I do not know the tech stack well enough to be able to interfere with their part of the process too much.

Should you be a developer and product owner on the same project?

My opinion here is no, no you should not. I have found that the two things interfere far too much with each other. Product decisions become watered down as you try and imagine how you could implement a feature and trade-offs are made before they are required.

There is often a healthy tension between developers and the product owner as they both negotiate for what can be implemented, the developers heading for the best technical solution and the product owner for the best outcome for the users. Without this discussion neither is adequately represented.

I have tried hard to maintain this tension. However, my team have informed me that it might be better to go to a meeting room if I am going to argue with myself; apparently, it can be a bit off-putting!

Conclusion

In short, having enough technical knowledge to communicate effectively with the development team is a great thing, as long as you can stop yourself interfering with the development process.

Do not, however, try to be both a product owner and a developer on the same project unless you want your teammates to think you are insane… and if you do it for long enough they might end up being right!