We don’t hear enough from practicing BAs and POs

I’m looking to interview practicing business analysts and product owners to find out more about what’s actually happening in the wild. Interested?

There’s been a lot going on this week, so I wasn’t able to set aside the time to write a coherent article about the topic I wanted to cover - ditching “the business”.

So instead, I thought I’d provide a quick update into what’s going on and put a request out there.

Working On InsideProduct

Alongside my day gig and a couple freelance writing projects, I’ve started working on InsideProduct to make it more useful to you, and a bigger part of KBPMedia.

My ambition is to make it more than a weekly newsletter, but also a place where business analysts and product owners can go to get tips and techniques to make their career better. Especially if you work in an organization that builds software for its own use.

There’s quite a bit of information out there from the product management community that can be useful, but you have to cut through the silicon valley, start up, and tech company bias that exists in a lot of those articles. I’d like InsideProduct to be the place that pulls the useful information from those resources and explains how it’s relevant for people working finance, insurance, retail, healthcare, government, or even not for profit.

To help with that, I’ve joined a couple different programs that provide guidance in how to build newsletters and websites. In both cases, they had me do an empathy mapping exercise. That felt off, because in order for empathy mapping to be truly effective, you need to base it on research of the people you’re trying to solve.

Even though I’ve had plenty of experience building internal products, I also realize I’m not my audience. I need to talk some practicing business analysts and product owners.

The unrealistic world of LinkedIn

In addition, I’m growing tired of the distorted view of product people you see from places like Linked In. If you want to get stories about what product is like, you can hear from tons of product coaches or product leaders at tech companies.

What is more difficult to find are the stories of people working in the industries I mentioned before who are helping their fellow employees do their jobs better. I think we could all benefit from a more balanced view of the type of work that business analysts and product owners actually do.

So now for my request

In the interest of making sure I provide information thats useful for you, I’d like to talk to a few of you about what your day to day looks like, what challenges you face, and where you could use some help. And, if you’re willing I’d like to share insights from those stories (with the amount of acknowledgment or anonymity that you’re comfortable with) here in upcoming issues of InsideProduct.

So if you’re interested in chatting, reply to this email and let me know. We’ll get a time set up.

Your experiences and insights will help me help you have a more successful and fulfilling career.

Thanks!

Kent

PS - I’ll get back to ditching “the business” next week.