My name is Manuel Márquez and today I will be telling you about my experience as a Product Owner at ArkusNexus and the challenges and growth opportunities that I've had in my 4+ years working at the company:
Something that the company takes great care of is with the integration of its members to the team and the company in general. It continually holds events and people themselves take the initiative to organize things like pool and video game tournaments, bringing people from outside for drawing courses and more.Anything you can think of and might want to try, there will probably be more people with the same interests. For example, I helped organize a video game tournament and currently give English classes to various co-workers.
With so many active accounts in the company there's a lot of switching between teams as the needs of the clients evolve: the accounts grow, new projects start, new technologies are adopted. It's not uncommon for developers to move to other accounts and for your team to get new people, either newly hired or from another group. It's always good to receive feedback from a new perspective and help these new elements to quickly integrate with the team.
Likewise, with so many accounts under the same roof the company encourages the creation of communities related to a role or technology, such as QAs, POs, Angular, .NET, etc. These meetings are an excellent way to get to know different perspectives on how to do things and to share experiences in the position or with the technology.
Every team is different. Although we all handle SCRUM and try to follow certain common standards due to our CMMI certification, the mechanics and work environments can be very different: there's many types of personalities here at ArkusNexus and that enriches the company and some speak continuously with the client and others just have scheduled calls; there are also variations in leadership style and decision making: from reaching a consensus to delegating multiple types of responsibilities to give people a chance to learn and grow to a more centralized approach that makes sure the project stays on course.
This is something that every Product Owner in their career encounters: clients who don't know how to be agile or who think they use SCRUM when in reality they don't. It's part of the PO's job to teach them how to work with agile and show them the advantages of sticking to the framework.
Doing this greatly improves team productivity and speed of development. If your team tries to be agile and the customer is not, you'll often feel as if you're on a bike with people constantly jamming sticks on the wheel.
You may start with a small team and have to wear the hats of many roles, but as the needs and expectations of the client, grow the team will do too and you have to learn to let go and share responsibilities with others and give them the opportunity to take on the role and make it their own.
These are some of the things that I can share in my experience as a Product Owner at ArkusNexus Tijuana and Monterrey, where I currently reside. Click here for more information about ArkusNexus and our products.
