Do You Need a Technical Product Owner?
As someone who started as a technical product owner, I can tell you this is the wrong question!
If your product owner is acting as a project manager or business analyst, defining technical requirements for the development team, then, of course, they should have technical skills. But then they wouldn’t be a true product owner, and honestly, aren't providing the value they should.
The product owner role was born out of a need to have someone focus their energies on customer and business needs, NOT to come up with technical solutions. Even if they are technical, I would highly suggest they still don't provide technical solutions because they aren't the person building the solution!
There are only two exceptions when a product owner must be technical:
1) You have component teams where multiple teams are required to deliver value to a customer. This requires a deep understanding of system dependencies so that teams can stay aligned. However, component teams come at a cost and should be avoided when possible. They are slow, prone to more technical issues, and have difficulty maintaining focus and accountability. Ideally, all teams are focused directly on customer value streams. After all, customers pay for your product, not other internal teams.
2) When the customer is an engineer. This was my case. To empathize with my customers, I had to understand technical processes and provide easy-to-use APIs and an SDK. If you don't know what this is, that's fine, it was a special case. But the point stands, even with technical skills, they should not be dictating technical solutions, but focusing on customer needs.
So what is the right question?
Are you empowering your software engineers to make great technical decisions?
That means that you are treating engineers as creative experts that can best define the solutions that fit your technology stack and their skills.
That means that your product leaders are skillful at uncovering customer needs and conveying those needs so that others understand what's really important.
That means your organization rewards clearly defining and meeting customer outcomes, not building what features senior leadership wants.
And that means engineers are comfortable experimenting with different technical solutions to uncover the ways that work best for customers.
Ah, but wait, doesn't a product owner have to be technical to communicate effectively with engineers?
Again, it goes back to how effective your product organization is. If it works as I stated above, a product owner with technical knowledge is minimally valuable. Engineers will have no problem talking about priorities with the product owner, or anyone else because it will be focused on customer and business needs, not implementation.
If your organization is spelling out solutions to engineers, perhaps only relying on them for the method of implementation, then yes, your product owner would need technical skills to effectively manage product quality and dependencies between teams. And again, that means your product owner is not spending time providing the value they should. So, if you're asking if you need a product owner with technical skills, you may want to take a step back and look at how well your organization is running.
How do you hire a great product owner?
Is the person you are considering as a product owner a good communicator?
Are they aware of their own and customer biases?
Do they take time to really sit with and understand customers?
Can they effectively interpret data?
Do they challenge their own assumptions with data?
Do they promote creative thinking with their teams?
If your answer is yes to these, that sounds like a great product owner, regardless of technical skills.
