It's easy to become a bad product owner - you set tasks that don't solve customer problems

Sergei was born in Kishinev. After school, he entered Moscow State University and went to study in Moscow. But he started taking his first steps in IT while still in Moldova. Sergey shared with me how it was in this interview.

Sergey Komarov has successfully launched and led innovative products such as Personal Finance Management, Smart Tips, Investments, search functions in banking apps and more for an audience of over 50 million monthly users.

It's a pleasure to have this conversation with you. Even though you and I know each other, I've noticed a pattern that I learn more interesting details through interviews than I do in informal conversations 🙂 🙂 I'm glad we're talking. 

Please tell us, for the readers, where you are now and what you're doing.

I work for a bank in the role of Chief Product Owner. I am responsible for our mobile app, the Product Owners guild and the BigData platform, on the basis of which we are building our first Data-Driven digital products. I am also one of the members of the bank's digital transformation team.

Creating websites as a schoolboy

How did your journey into the world of IT begin?

I was about 16 years old when my friend learnt how to make websites and told me about it. I used to think that only super professionals could make them, but it turned out to be pretty simple. I got curious and decided to give it a try. The first sites were not very good. The second ones, by the way, weren't very pretty either (laughs). But as time went on, I got my own page and started making customized websites. I was even paid, then on $20, then on $50. And then became popular flash games, and I began to actively study this topic. I remember my parents for the New Year gave me some books, and one of them was on flash. Later I had my first client from America, who ordered me a postcard editor. I got my friends involved, we fulfilled this order together, and that's how a new period of custom product development began.

What results have you been able to achieve?

When I was in grade 12, I received an order from Moscow to make an app for tarot card divination. I had a friend who was a good designer, and together we completed this rather large order. Then I went to Moscow, and continued my co-operation with these guys there. The composition of our team gradually changed a bit, and I took a leadership position in development in our small company. I often involved my friends from university, and we developed quite high-quality games for Yandex, Rambler, and even Intel. 

Wow, that's not bad. What year was that?

This was between 2005 and 2009. Then came the popular story of making apps for social networks. I learnt the API. At that time I could already do both backend and frontend - which helped a lot in the process of creating products. We started working together with my friends from university and the first app we came up with was VKontakte kisses. The user could send a kiss to their girlfriend/friend. We knew how to do the development, but to promote it we partnered up with other uni guys who provided a big influx of audience. Unfortunately, we didn't make much money on this app, but we gathered a huge audience - more than 1 million users. The monthly active audience was 200,000 users. But we didn't know how to work with such indicators as retention, ARPU, we didn't even know the names of such indicators. We simply saw that the audience was falling and tried to take some action to bring it back, but all to no avail. Of course, with our current knowledge, we could have turned all this into a profitable business.

What brought in the main income?

As a result, the main profit came from developing websites and web services, and for a long time everything was going well, until the sanctions started. We had a large number of clients who were advertising agencies, and they all had their budgets cut, which, of course, we felt immediately and on ourselves. We left to work for large companies. I went to Sber, and, by the way, my business experience helped me a lot when I was hired. For example, I told the story of the launch of one of our apps called Trendo, which allowed us to share information about films watched, books read, games played and so on. I saw 80% users adding information about films and decided to focus only on them. Those who interviewed me at Sber were impressed that I was making decisions based on metrics. I remember they shook their heads approvingly at that point 🙂 🙂 .

First job as a salesman

So you got your first job?

Yes, it was my first job, although I was almost 29 years old. Formally at Sberbank I was called a project manager, but in reality I worked as a product owner and was responsible for analysing personal finances. Just before I started work, I read Bret King's book "Bank 2.0", which was about where modern banks are going, and I was "driven" by the idea that I had joined a team that could really turn a large bank into something new. The first time was, of course, difficult. Everything was new, because I had moved from a start-up to a huge corporation and a bank at the same time. Both were new to me. In the end, I worked at Sberbank for 5 years, and there were many changes during that period. At different times I was responsible for different products: Personal Finance Analysis, Smart Tips, Search, Personalisation and Sber ID.

What helped you learn how to work with metrics?

I did not receive any special education. I read a lot of articles, watched video clips, and tried to learn from the experience of more successful colleagues. Besides, in the course of my work, I saw the need to keep track of changes in metrics. For example, the application had service goals, and we knew only one conversion - from the beginning of the funnel to the very end of the funnel without intermediate stages. Then a new colleague Anton, with whom we are still friends, came to work with us and built a more detailed funnel. And we saw that in the middle there was a problem with signing a contract, which was inconvenient for users. We changed the approach a bit, and were able to improve the product design funnel many times over. The effect of trivial funnel markup then certainly impressed me. It was around that time that I became responsible for a rather complex data-driven product called Smart Tips. By the way, we won a prestigious EFMA (European Financial Management Association) award with this product. We became the innovation of the year in the category "Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence". We went to Rome to collect the award. It was very cool. I don't think I will ever get over the thrill of that win. 

Transition to the position of Chief Product Officer

What challenges have you faced in managing teams of other product owners?

At one point, I had two teams. I was responsible for search in the mobile app and for personalisation. It was a difficult moment, as there were product owners in each team, and I had to work with them directly, not directly with the team. I had to restrain myself from interfering as in the beginning it always seemed like I could do better on my own. But I learnt from one of my supervisors that you have to give each of your mentees a chance to make a mistake, so that each of them understands what the problem is and doesn't make a mistake a second time. And if they made the same mistake several times, then I had to draw conclusions and intervene in the process. 

How many people did you have under your command?

At first it was 10, then 20. But we have always worked in agile, where it is considered that the product owner is not a manager, but a member of the team, so I would say that they were not subordinates. It was my team, which itself often chelenged me for my decisions. Then I moved to the position of Chief Product Owner at Sber. That doesn't mean, of course, that I became Sber's Chief Product Owner. Rather, it speaks to the size and complexity of the product I was responsible for. We were making a product called SberBank ID, which we positioned as a "digital passport for the customer of the Sberbank ecosystem". And that was the next stage of my growth.

My team grew from 20 to 40 people. Nothing much changed in terms of management, i.e. it was more difficult for me to adapt from 10 to 20 than from 20 to 40. Then, when I was at MTS Bank, there was a moment when I had about 80 people in my team, and the format of work remained the same. I realised that it is true what they say that when the team size is between 10 and 100 people, the management format does not change much. I learnt to work with 1-1 prodcts, stay out of the team's daily life, and come to team demos to give feedback - that was enough.

Sometimes there came times when I had to fulfil not the role of CPO in the form of a manager of other products, but as a more senior product manager, and helped the guys in difficult product situations. For example, I helped them when they couldn't make the next important step, for example, to come up with a brand new service to solve a client's problem. In such cases, I would take all my weekends off, stay at home and solve the problem as a product owner, but with more experience. 

At what point did you experience your professional growth?

Once there came a point in Sberbank when my manager moved to another project and I was left to work directly with a higher manager. He didn't have much time for me, as his team size was almost 1000 people by that time. This was a time when I grew a lot in terms of soft skills because there was no one to stand up for me and I had to handle different situations on my own. During that time, I became, if not a shark, at least a piranha in political matters. 

How do you become a good salesman?

What can help you become a good salesperson?

Networking with other salespeople: from junior to senior level. They can help you understand your problem, which they may have already solved in their practice. It is important to communicate with developers who can tell you about new technological opportunities, which you can then apply to solve your problems. Often developers don't even have a "platform" to tell the business about something new. And this "platform" needs to be created. For example, knowing how Kafka works helps me now to design a business idea in our Digital Bank. It's worth talking to designers and analysts more too. These smart guys can offer a lot of insight too. A good product designer will often close gaps sellt. I've worked with such guys many times, and it was always a very cool tandem.

Okay, now it's interesting to learn about tools. What helps you come up with new solutions?

There are a large number of frameworks that I use in my work. One of my favourites is Impact Mapping, which allows you to describe in a very cool way everything that needs to be done in the product to achieve the desired goal. And, of course, another "tool" is empathy. I always try to put myself in the client's shoes. Here, for example, I'm a client, I'm running out of money. Am I going to think about topic X? Probably not. I think through exercises like this I have developed a quality of empathy that often helps me outside of my work. Especially when it comes to financial products, I'm very good at putting myself in the customer's shoes. This often helps me to guess what clients need without client research. Of course, that doesn't mean we don't do research. It means that the first or second hypothesis we test usually takes off. 

So, the secret to developing empathy for users is the ability to step into the customer's shoes and quality communication with customers?

Yes, but I would add something else here. A lot of people say you need to read a lot, and I agree with that. I once read a book called "From Good to Great" and it starts off by saying that it was written based on 5 years of research. That is, people did 5 years of research, interviews, did a lot of work and put it into one book, albeit a rather weighty one. It turns out that I have a choice to either go down the same path or read this book. There are some books that I reread several times. For example, the book Nudge¹ - about how to influence a client's decision-making. I have reread it three times, and each time I learn something new. It's very similar to Think Slow, Decide Fast.² . By the way, I have noticed that empathy and intelligence are not always correlated. I have noticed many times that intelligent people cannot accept that someone around them is not so intelligent; what prevents them, for example, from explaining the same thing in simpler words. 

Literature Tips

Can you give me an example of how such books help you in your work?

I like the example from Nudge's book about econ and humans, when they were asked: Which is better - giving customers a 20% discount on coffee, or topping off 20% of coffee for the same price? From the customer's perspective, it sounds the same. But, if you fiddle around and calculate the cost per milliliter, it turns out that the 20% discount is better for business. It's interesting that only econs think about this, not humans. Or the case study about how one car company increased their car sales by simply calling their customers and asking them the same question "Are you considering changing your car"? These are the kinds of examples that help me to be more mindful of my decision-making when designing UX and communicating with customers.

In the book Sapiens³  I learnt an interesting fact about sweets. In ancient times, when people saw a sweet, such as raspberries, they ate them all, because they didn't know when they would meet them next. That is why our desire to eat everything at once is drawn from there, while nowadays we have a fairly open access to sweets. This knowledge also helps in making decisions based on biology when implementing new functionality. Also, knowing about cognitive load helps.  

There's another good example in the Pixar book⁴which describes how they achieved success by collecting the opinions of all the experts on the new cartoon down to the cleaners to get the opinions of different people and understand what needs to be changed in the cartoon.

Do you use this principle in your team?

Yes, when I organise brainstorms, I call not only product owners, but also guys from other areas so that we can sketch out ideas. And even the craziest ideas are welcome. I always say that this is the place where we can propose anything and nobody will laugh at each other. We don't criticise each other, we complement each other. For example, if you come to the conclusion that we need a teleporter to solve our problem, then let's discuss it, no matter how strange it looks. 

Tips for aspiring salespeople

What do you look for when hiring junior product owners?

It's important for me to understand that it's teachable. There's never a 100% match. Junior product owner is almost like a data analyst, so I usually ask to talk to users, make a list of metrics, and then I sit down with them and sort out their misconducts. It's important to keep in mind that junior product owners usually try to guess the manager's decision, but the manager doesn't always know the answer to the question they asked. I was lucky to have one supervisor who would not allow any decisions to be made without doing user research, and forced me to rise to the level of the problem. I was also lucky to work with good designers who asked a lot of questions along the lines of, "What problem are you solving?", "How are users solving this problem now?" and so on.

What advice do you have for aspiring product owners, product managers?

You can start by learning about design thinking. Even if you are not working now, experiment, go and talk to potential users, learn how they think. Even if it won't be a "battle" product, but just a product for training, but if you are an aspiring product owner or just want to become one - it's important to learn how to solve real customer problems as early as possible.

Of course, the role of a mentor in the development of a product owner plays an important role. I can't imagine how one can grow into a product owner without a mentor. In my case, I had classroom teachers who helped me develop as a professional. Well and standard - books, conferences, start to get into it, communicate with other POs. Good POs have empathy, they have been beginners themselves and understand how difficult it can be. 

You can also take various courses. I can definitely recommend the GoPractice course, which I took and was very pleased with. It was very useful, and I still go there sometimes to re-read things.

And it is also very important to soberly assess your level as a salesperson. It's easy to become a bad product owner - you just set tasks from your head that don't solve the client's problems or solve them poorly. And it seems that you and your team are busy, but the business effect is not there, or it is negative at all. By the way, it is harder to become a bad programmer because you need to be able to write some code :))))))

1. "Nudge. The Architecture of Choice", by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein ↩︎
2. "Think Slow, Decide Fast," by Daniel Kahneman. ↩︎
3. "Sapiens. A Brief History of Humanity", by Yuval Noah ↩︎
4. "Corporation of Geniuses. How to manage a team of creative people", authors:Ed Catmell, Amy Wallace ↩︎