Hylke de haan | Product Owner
From Tester to Product Owner
In 2014, Hylke de Haan started at Mysolution as a Support and Test Consultant. Over the past year and a half, he has transitioned to the role of Product Owner. Interestingly, his career path has diverged from his academic background. Hylke completed a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Groningen (RUG), followed by a Master’s degree in Marketing Management.
The growth opportunities
“I started my career in a Marketing and Sales role within the ICT industry after completing my studies. I enjoyed the industry, but after a while, I realized that I found the substantive aspects more interesting than the commercial side. Therefore, I decided to transition into a more functional role within the ICT sector. I was already working with Dynamics CRM and knew about Mysolution through a client, so it was a targeted next step for me.”
Always thinking from the customer needs
“This was a fun way to quickly gain substantive knowledge. From testing you keep up to date with the latest product developments, and from support you learn well to think from the customer’s perspective. I then moved on to issue and release management, plus the role of Functional Designer.
From business administration you get acquainted with all business processes, and the specialization in marketing ensures that you learn to think from the customer’s needs. Within Mysolution, this way of thinking is paramount to ensure that your product remains close to your customers. Substantive knowledge is of course welcome, but you can always acquire that and as a starter you are also given every opportunity to do so.”
Product Owner at Mysolution
“Scrumming had been going on within Mysolution for some time, however there was no formal Product Owner position yet. Since I was already in charge of issue and release management, as well as making functional designs, it was a logical next step for me. Of course there is much more to it, but so far I experience it very positive because you can also put a bigger stamp on the product.
My position is Product Owner in the areas of front office, back office and portal/API. The role of Product Owner means that you are responsible for adding as much value to the product as possible.”
Three questions are central
“This consists of the ‘what’ on the one hand (prioritizing so that development per sprint works on what adds the most value to the product at that moment) and the ‘how’ on the other hand (delivering and working out specifications, mostly in consultation with consultant/customer). Furthermore, you represent all stakeholders, so in decision-making you have to take everyone’s interests into account: those of customers, development, consultants, etc. That makes the work very dynamic.”
Big steps with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
“The biggest challenge now is to make a transformation towards agile and scrum with the entire organization. One goal here is to become more flexible by being able to issue releases more frequently, in a way that adjustments in a new version are never very large and thus the impact remains limited.
In addition to an organizational change, we are also dependent on technology in this regard. It would be ideal to perform automatic updates across the board at night for all our customers working in the Azure cloud, for example, and that they are not affected by this in the morning. That way you create a very short feedback loop with your customers, errors are fixed in no time and customers get value for money quickly. The new platform version Dynamics Business Central brings the realization of these plans another step closer.”
Successes within Mysolution
“Success comes in many forms, and this is different in every role and phase. When I had just joined Mysolution for a few months, I made a comment to my supervisor that I didn’t find our Outlook add-in very useful. A conversation then ensued about how I envisioned it then, and my response was, “Work it out, get a developer to estimate build time and then we’ll discuss it next week. Then it was built immediately and our customers are still working with this software. I get satisfaction from such things.
What matters most to me is the room for personal initiative and responsibility, and also the room to ‘go for broke’. Fortunately, this exists within Mysolution.
Formally speaking, there is no next step for a Product Owner. That means that in your role you grow with the product, so therein lies the challenge. For me personally, it means that in time I also want to get involved in a more strategic way.”
Will you grow with us?
Making a difference. Being meaningful to our customers. Don’t you shy away from the brainteasers and brainteasers in your work?
