Every industry has different roles, in the software industry there is a role called the “Product Owner” also referred to as the “Product Manager”. First, I’ll explain this unique role in the software industry; then I’ll make a case that as print continues to evolve and become more digitally friendly and software dependent printers are going to have to have this role in their organizations.

In software a Product Owner is the translator between the business and the technology team. The business presumably interacts directly with the customer and comes back with feature requests, challenges, and overall needs. This communication is not clean, not organized, and unfortunately generally consists of people trying to solve the problem instead of describing the challenge. I’ll give you an example; a sales representative returns from a meeting with the direct request for a custom report from their customer. A custom report is not a challenge, it is a solution to an unknown problem. The Product Owner’s job is to ask clarifying questions to get to a clear understanding of the “challenge”. A poor Product Owner simply executes on whatever people bring back. A strong Product Owner uncovers the real challenges; offers better solutions because they know the breadth and depth of the software and most important they step back and see how to solve one thing in a strategic and flexible way so it can be broadly applied to many situations.

Most people ask for a custom report because they don’t know that their need for information can be solved in many ways. A custom report is a snap shot of what happened in the past. I like to say; the number one thing that is asked for after you deliver a custom report is “another custom report” because customers want answers to multiple levels of questions. Once you give them a report, they dive another level deep and have more questions. This is why business intelligence dashboards and/or live data queries can be better solutions depending on what challenge the customer is trying to solve.