Every product owner should have the skills to create and evolve product strategy. A particularly talented one combines a deep understanding of their customers with a solid grasp of technology. Even with all that, I have my own list of things I need the product owner to be good at.

For any project, a quality UXer should be able to define the problem that design needs to solve, identify the skills required and the tasks involved, estimate the time it will take to accomplish those tasks and commit to a project schedule. But even with all that, we still need a project manager to do these five things well. 

It has been my experience that striving to do these five things well can transform an organization’s approach to design without the tedium and frustration of ideological debate.

As soon as we wedge the phrase “user experience” into a conversation, we make it sound like what we do is somehow exclusive

"When a user puts the elements together in a certain way, they get the experience we had in mind. But when they choose only some of the elements and then they combine them in ways we hadn’t intended, they can still have a satisfying (and in some cases exceptional) experience."

"We like to think that although we may be influenced by emotions and other factors, decision-making is a conscious activity. Our new brains get downright snotty about it, practically ignoring the contribution from the meat deeper inside our skulls."

"How we organize things isn’t just philosophical: Most of us are born either as Lumpers or Splitters and we won’t change over the course of our lives."