My fiancé and I recently bought an older home built in the early 1900s. Despite it’s age, it has a lot of modern amenities. The previous owners did a great job updating the place. The only thing that I do not like about the house is the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong. It is a REALLY nice kitchen. But, it’s just not our style. So, we decided that we would give it a face-lift and make it more of our own.
The first step in our renovation process was to start small and change out the light fixtures above the island. If you’re into super contemporary fixtures, man, this was the light for you. I on the other hand, am more traditional and wanted that thing out. We met with a local contractor because the job seemed bigger than just taking it down and putting up something new, and we were right. It required dry wall work, patching, and other things I know nothing about.
The contractor came over on a day that I was at home. I thought I could just hang out in the living room and get some work done while he played Kool in the Gang in the kitchen to pass the time. I quickly figured out that wasn’t the best approach.
Thankfully, our contractor wanted me involved in every step of the way. At first, I thought, “I don’t have time for this, I have other stuff to do!” But then I thought, “wait a minute! I’m acting much like a product owner here and he’s acting like a development team. Maybe I should go along with this?” Our contractor started measuring where the lights should go. As he did this, he constantly asked “is this what you want?” It was almost like we were doing continuous development and testing together. After we measured everything and held the lights up, we realized that it wasn’t what I wanted. The requirements had changed and we were quickly able to respond to that change without realizing it at the end.
I also made sure my stakeholder, AKA, my fiancé, was getting demos throughout the process. I sent him pictures of our progress together and it was great. He was also able to give feedback as well, which I prioritized for our contractor.
All in all, I’m glad that I was able to collaborate with our contractor. The end product had the best quality and I’m really happy with the results. Can your product owner say that?
