Product ownership is taking root in HR. Are you ready?

Futureproof your career with a Product Owner Certification

A product mindset allows HR to build solutions that are truly people-centered, with clear priorities and measurable outcomes. Adopting a product mindset is essential for HR teams looking to fully embrace a professional Agile approach.

If there’s one essential role for agile product success, it’s the Product Owner (PO).

What is a Product Owner?

The role of the Product Owner, or “PO,” is essential for successfully implementing an agile value delivery model within people and culture teams (HR). Professionally trained POs bring real impact—accelerating delivery, enhancing team health, sharpening focus, and improving the outcomes of each product release.

Learn more about how the role of HR Product Owner compares to the more traditional HR Process Owner on our blog.

Who makes a great Product Owner?

“I can easily spot a great Product Owner (PO) in a cohort of HR folks. A PO requires guts, clarity, courage and discipline. This role needs you to balance paradoxical traits, such as being structured AND human centric, listening carefully AND ignoring some needs, negotiating AND standing firm, as well as having a head for numbers AND empathy for others. You will also need to balance innovation and novelty with boring compliance constraints and technical limitations.

This is a true leadership role and a 180 shift in mindset from to how we are used to working in HR. The PO role is key in a shift from process-driven tasks to delivering real value through a product mindset.”

- Riina Hellström, Founder of Agile HR Community

Set yourself apart with Product Owner training and certification

For those of you ready to step up as a Product Owner, know that credentials and certified training will set you apart. Not only do they validate your skills, but they also make you more competitive as this role gains recognition across HR.

While most Agile PO training focuses on technical and software-driven approaches, we’ve trained hundreds of non-technical Product Owners specifically for HR.

A really great, practical course which gives you all the tools you need to get started on your product owner journey.

Sarah Bullock

Global Talent & Learning at Experian

This is great introduction to Agile and Product Ownership in HR, allowing you to explore what it means to be agile in an HR context, its' benefits and challenges in implementation into your organisation.

Yagini Dave

Talent Acquisition Manager at INSTANDA