If everyone owns the product

How come every single Product class, workshop, conference I have been to is LARGELY attended by only product people?

The crux of Product Thinking asserts that an entire team owns the success (and failure) of a product. It is a shift from antiquated ways of separating roles and making the process into a series of handoffs, and trying to move towards a model where each person on a cross-functional team (which we should really just call Product Team) has a role, but also has unique perspectives on how to build and improve products.

I worked for (what we didn’t call but could have called) a PMO that set goals around the number of trainings and offerings given by the Agile Learning Org and how many people attended these trainings. I was fairly new on the team and not trying to ruffle feathers, but nonetheless I raised my hand and asked, “why are we using these as metrics instead of a more meaningful metric around WHO is taking these trainings?”

Silence.

If we are truly trying to move towards a future where each person on a team possesses Product Thinking, shouldn’t we be investing in equipping teams towards a shared understanding of product concepts?

It is an expensive investment. But then, so is building the wrong thing because only 1 person is contributing energy towards discovery and curiosity. Some of the BEST ideas on my teams have come from engineers, from QA, from design. The stronger the team is in product, the stronger the product. Full stop.