There are several roles that fit into the category of a low-code planner, but two of the most important are product owners and analysts. Although planners aren’t always involved in development work themselves, they’re essential when starting a new Appian project. A planner will work to define the processes to be automated, prioritize development efforts, and ensure coordination across business units.
Let’s take a look at how product owners and analysts function as low-code planners, how they differ from one another, and how to best prepare them for success.
The product owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the development team’s work. However, their larger role is to represent the needs of the business, not the development team’s. To keep communication clear, there should only be one product owner per project. That doesn’t mean a product owner is solely responsible for all decisions or initiatives on a project, only that they serve as the single point of contact between the development team and the business.
Some of the product owner’s core responsibilities include: articulating critical business needs, prioritizing development requirements, ensuring requirements are visible, transparent, and clearly communicated to all team members, and collaboratively creating a backlog of work to be done by the development team.
As the point of contact between the development team and the business, it’s crucial that product owners keep a constant channel of communication with the development team. In addition, good product owners will also have a deep understanding of the business, such that they feel confident in making important prioritization decisions.
As mentioned earlier, the product owner represents the business, so it’s important to look for people already familiar with the ins and outs of an organization. The best product owners will have broad relationships across the business, extensive domain knowledge, decision-making skills, and a proven track record of accountable ownership. Product owners don’t necessarily need to have extensive technical training or knowledge, but it helps if they’re familiar with basic Agile practices like building backlogs and reviewing user stories.
Product owners don’t necessarily need to have extensive technical training or knowledge, but it helps if they’re familiar with basic Agile practices like building backlogs and reviewing user stories.
Here’s our suggested minimum criteria for identifying low-code product owners:
Additionally, we suggest product owners earn their Certified Scrum Product Owner certification from the Scrum Alliance.
Appian Overview: Product owners may benefit from our Appian Overview training in order to better understand the terminology and capabilities of Appian.
Appian Foundations: If the product owner is more heavily involved with the day-to-day work of the development team, as in the case of a project manager, then the Appian Foundations course is recommended. The course provides a healthy amount of our suggested delivery methodology, including topics such as application planning, translation of requirements into application components, and leveraging low-code tools for creating design documents and proofs of concept.
The analyst’s job is to help the product owner convert the needs of the business into actionable backlog items. It’s best to look for someone with strong communication and presentation skills, so as to better facilitate an open dialogue between team members. Additionally, analysts should excel at problem solving and be familiar with Appian terminology. To better assist in requirements gathering, analysts should have some basic training in planning, testing and designing low-code applications.
A common task an analyst must perform is choosing the most appropriate automation tool for a project or workflow. Whether that’s an integration, decision object, or robotic process automation (RPA), analysts must be well-versed with the capabilities and terminology of the Appian low-code platform to make these decisions. For this reason, some organizations (including Appian) nominate a developer on the team to fill the analyst role. While it’s acceptable to keep the roles of analysts and developers separate, it’s important that both are sufficiently trained on the Appian platform.
If you plan on using your developers as analysts, then the background criteria is the same as for low-code developers. If you’re looking for a non-developer to fill the analyst role, then we’ve found the following criteria to be helpful:
Appian Foundations: Provides the tools to follow Appian’s suggested methodology, speak the language of developers, and write better requirements for applications.
Appian Certified Analyst: Helps validate the knowledge and skills required to work alongside Appian developers.