industry Archives - XABLU

What is a Product Owner?

Kasia Krzyzanowski — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 09:49:15 +0000

In the world of software development, one role is central between IT, business and customer needs: the Product Owner. For teams working with Agile methodologies, especially Scrum, the Product Owner plays an essential role in driving the product vision and delivering value for both users and the business.

What does a Product Owner do?

At its core, a Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of a product through continuous collaboration with the development team, stakeholders and end users. In Agile methodology, their core job is to manage the product backlog-a dynamic list of tasks, features and solutions that the team needs to address over time.

The Product Owner ensures that the backlog aligns with the product’s long-term vision and business goals, prioritizing tasks based on value and urgency. They work closely with teams, including developers, UX designers and marketers, to ensure everyone is working toward the same goals.

In essence, the Product Owner acts as the voice of the customer within the development team. They translate customer needs into actionable user stories and ensure the team delivers features that solve real problems.

So what sort of profile do you need to become one?

A successful Product Owner often has a diverse background. While degrees in Computer Science, Business, or Marketing are a good fit, this role is mostly about skills and experience. Technical knowledge, such as understanding software development, is important, but you don’t necessarily have to be a coder. What really matters is your ability to switch between business goals and technical teams, with a keen eye for priorities and customer value. Experience with Agile and Scrum methodologies is a big plus, but the ability to communicate and make decisions effectively is essential.

Common challenges for Product Owners

Managing expectations: Balancing the sometimes conflicting demands of stakeholders.
Preventing Scope Creep: Maintaining focus and priorities despite new requests or ideas.
Pressing for Predictability: Delivering results within the flexible Agile environment while stakeholders want certainty.

How is a Product Owner different from a Product Manager?

Although there is overlap between the roles, the focus of a Product Manager is more on the strategic vision of the product, such as market research and long-term goals. The Product Owner deals with the day-to-day execution of product development, such as prioritizing tasks and collaborating with the development team. In smaller companies, the roles are sometimes combined, but in larger organizations they often remain separate.

Ready to apply?

Think you’re ready to launch yourself into this role? We’re currently looking for a Product Owner here at XABLU! If you’ve already got some experience under your belt, take a look at our Product Owner job post. If you’re a university student looking for your first position, learn more about our Internship/Graduation Assignment opportunities. Who knows, maybe next week we’ll be introducing you on the blog as our newest team member!

Curious how Xablu can help your organization ?

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Xablu at TechDays 2017

XABLU HQ — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 06:00:00 +0000

We’re proud to be a Gold sponsor of this year’s TechDays NL! We’ll be offering a session on building connected apps with Xamarin, MvvmCross and Azure, and an evening hackathon where you can dive into building an innovative app, getting hands-on advice from our team as needed.

More details to come!

The post Xablu at TechDays 2017 appeared first on XABLU.

Inspiring tech and new connections at Google I/O Extended Luxembourg

Kasia Krzyzanowski — Fri, 19 May 2017 10:47:00 +0000

Kasia Krzyzanowski

esterday, XABLU hosted a Google I/O Extended event in Luxembourg City. A diverse crowd of tech enthusiasts came out to enjoy networking over pizza and drinks, followed by a live screening of the Google I/O 2017 keynote. The upbeat atmosphere was enhanced by the cool industrial-style venue The Office and the amazing weather. The keynote was full of surprises and exciting new products, for both developers and consumers. Here’s what we took note of:

AI-everything

Last year AI was introduced as the big ‘new thing’, this year AI got the overall focus. AI is now deeply embedded in all of Google’s products; from translation to photo sharing to a new ‘intelligent’ drawing tool, AutoDraw. The clear message was that AI holds amazing potential to help us in every part of our lives, and is now a main focus of Google in general. It’s Open Source TensorFlow software is the most popular software of it’s type on GitHub.[/cs_text][cs_text]

Actions on Google

While it wasn’t clear whether this was already available to developers, Actions on Google was an exciting new feature that takes away many steps of the ordering process, making the consumer experience for things like ordering takeout extremely quick and easy. Doing away with the need for setting up a new account and providing billing details with every new vendor, it has great potential the mobile commerce market.[/cs_text][cs_text]

Google Vitals and Kotlin

A big announcement for both consumers and developers with the new Android O was Google Vitals, which offers many new ‘under-the-hood’ performance improvements for Android devices. With the boot time now twice as fast, and apps running more quickly and smoothly, the user experience which be much higher. In addition to showing off some new developer features like the Profiler in Android Studio , Google also made a surprise announcement: Kotlin is now an officially supported language on Android![/cs_text][cs_text]

SuperChat

A new feature that got lots of developers excited was the launch of SuperChat for YouTube, which lets fans pay to post special comments that go beyond highlighted text and make it possible to physically affect the set of a live video. For example, a fan could turn on the lights or turn up the music while an act is performing. With an open API already available, we can’t wait to see what creative applications developers come up with![/cs_text][cs_text]

The Assistant

Google’s Assistant was introduced last year as part of the Allo chat app. After that it became part of the Google Home speaker. Voice activated, it can interact with you in a conversational manner. Google is taking this to the next level: soon you’ll be able to pay with Assistant, translate with the Assistant and integrate with 3rd parties. Also big news was the announcement that the Assistant is coming to iOS, taking on Siri.

Looking to 2018

With the amazing potential of all of the newly announced products and features from Google, we can’t wait to see how these develop and the new apps and services that will result over the coming year!

Curious how Xablu can help your organization ?

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Google I/O Extended Luxembourg

XABLU HQ — Wed, 17 May 2017 16:00:00 +0000

Google I/O 2017 and the Future of Mobile Development

Google I/O is an annual developer festival held at the outdoor Shoreline Amphitheatre in California, where Google presents its latest innovations and products. We’re bringing the magic of this year’s event to Luxembourg through Google I/O Extended.

Join fellow developers and technology enthusiasts at The Office for a live screening of Google’s keynote presentation. This will be followed by a discussion on what the latest innovations mean for the future of mobile development and the Microsoft ecosystem, led by Xamarin and Microsoft MVP Martijn van Dijk.

Schedule:

18:00 Walk-in with pizza and drinks

19:00 Google I/O keynote live stream

20:30 Discussion on the future of mobile development

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