Digital Product Owner
Job Description:Digital product owners lead a team of specialists to build online products and services for customers.
Job Category:What you will do:
As a digital product owner, you’ll:
- work closely with your teams
- look at user feedback to help improve the product
- work with designers to make the product easy to use
- develop business cases and user stories for new features
- work with the design team to draft versions of your product or service
- keep people informed about your product’s development
- manage relationships between teams, partners and customers
Skills:
You’ll need:
- knowledge of computer operating systems, hardware and software
- to be able to use a computer and the main software packages confidently
As well as:
Entry Requirements:
You can get into this job through:
- a university course
- an apprenticeship
- working towards this role
- specialist courses
University
You could do a degree or postgraduate degree in:
- computing
- project management
- business management
- marketing
Apprenticeship
You could start by doing a project manager degree apprenticeship.
After completing your apprenticeship, you’ll need to get experience working in digital delivery teams before getting a job as a product owner.
Work
You could start out in a junior or assistant role. You’ll usually need to have some relevant work experience in a job like:
- product marketing
- software development
- customer experience
- user experience (UX) design
When looking for work, most employers will expect you to have experience in:
- search engine optimisation (SEO)
- analytics and understanding online user behaviours
- web design and marketing
- helping a business make large changes to their digital products
- agile project management methods like Scrum, Kanban and Lean
Other Routes
If you do not have relevant work experience, there are some things you can do.
You could:
- develop some skills in basic web design and data analysis
- study online about the role of digital product management
- take a specialist course in product management
- join online product management communities for tips and networking opportunities
Working Hours and Environment:
You could work in an office or at a client’s business.
Career Path & Progression:
With experience, you could apply for more senior jobs, such as head of product or senior product manager.
Some product managers also become self-employed consultants.