A Knowledge Map for Product Owners

A PO need not be an expert in every field. However, the role requires enough breadth to ask meaningful questions and make judgments across specialties.

mindmap
  root((Product Owner))
    User
      Research
      Journey
      Pain Point
      UX
    Product
      Strategy
      Roadmap
      Backlog
      Prioritization
    Business
      Revenue
      Cost
      Market
      Competition
    Technology
      Architecture
      API
      Data
      Build/Release
    Delivery
      Agile
      Scrum
      Kanban
      QA
    Data
      KPI
      Funnel
      Retention
      Experiment
    Collaboration
      Writing
      Facilitation
      Negotiation
      Decision

1. Users and UX

What to know:

Actual behavior beyond personas
User Journey
Task Flow
Usability
Discoverability
Error State
Accessibility
Feedback Loop

2. Product Strategy

Vision
Product Goal
Positioning
Problem/Solution Fit
Roadmap
Opportunity Cost
MVP / MLP
The concept of Product-Market Fit

3. Technology

You do not need to become a developer, but understanding the following is valuable.

Client / Server
API
Database
State
File Format / Serialization
Frontend / Backend
Build / Deploy
Git / Branch / PR
Architecture / Dependency
Basic concepts of Performance / Memory

4. Data

KPI
North Star Metric
Funnel
Conversion
Retention
Cohort
Leading / Lagging Indicator
A/B Test
Correlation vs Causation

5. Delivery

Backlog
Sprint
Kanban
Definition of Done
Acceptance Criteria
QA
Release
Technical Debt
Dependency

6. Business

Revenue Model
Cost Structure
Basic concepts of LTV / CAC
Pricing
Market size
Competing products
Customer Segment

A PO's goal is not deep expertise in everything, but adjusting the depth of knowledge to what each decision requires.