Product Owner: Value Maximizer

How do you maximize value in the workplace or as a business owner?

I’ll tell you what I’ve done.  I have a list of things that I’ve made for when I start a new business to get it off the ground and running.  Here is what that looks like.

Then in my trello list I’ve got over a 100 things to do and continue doing list for me and my team.  Not always are the things listed about making more money.  Sometimes it is a list of things to do to improve employee morale and smooth out processes for the production manager or appointment setter. 

I also like to set aside time once each week to focus on business development things so that at least once a week I’m focused on things outside of the day to day to improve how the company is run.  This same tactic is applied in scrum with the sprint reviews and should be done at least once every sprint so that the entire gets to benefit from the results of process improvement.

The scrum guide says that the product owner is a value maximizer.  I think the key to prioritizing what is most important first, second, and third is to ask the customer (stakeholder) and listen to what their biggest pain point is.  If you can key in on that, create actionable steps to solving it, and then either complete the actions needed to solve that pain point yourself or source it out to your team then you are on the right track for how to maximize the value you render to your stakeholder and make sure that everyone is successful.