Why successful nearshoring starts with a strong product owner

Nearshoring provides organizations with direct access to highly skilled IT talent at cost-efficient rates. However, to ensure the success of software development through nearshoring, a strong product owner is indispensable. This critical role connects the business, end users, and the external development team. The product owner establishes clear priorities, ensures effective communication, and safeguards the timely delivery of a software product that creates real value for its users. This article explains why a product owner is not just beneficial, but an essential prerequisite for successful nearshoring.

To remain competitive, organizations must respond quickly to changing user needs and continue to innovate. This requires ongoing modernization of the IT landscape, while the necessary expertise and capacity are often lacking internally. Outsourcing software development can then offer a solution.

A popular form of outsourcing is nearshoring: delegating development work to a team in a nearby country with a similar work culture. The limited time difference enables smooth communication without delays. Romania is a well-known nearshoring destination, where more than 500 university-educated IT specialists work daily on innovative solutions for our clients at the NetRom Campus.

The product owner: an indispensable link in nearshoring

The product owner acts as the connection between the business and the IT specialists within the development team. In nearshore development, this role becomes even more critical. The product owner translates business objectives into concrete product functionality and enables the external team to work effectively. Through clear expectation management, consistent communication, and a results-driven approach, the product owner ensures optimal collaboration with the development team.

A lack of direction or unclear communication inevitably leads to misunderstandings, uncontrolled scope expansion, and a loss of business value. An effective product owner is the key figure who manages complexity and ensures that the team builds the right product in the right way.

Seven essential competencies of an effective product owner

To make software development through nearshoring successful, a product owner must master the following seven responsibilities.

1. Communicating a clear product vision

An external development team can only work effectively when it fully understands the product vision. The product owner communicates this vision clearly and convincingly, enabling the team to operate independently without constant clarification. This requires proactive, transparent communication and the ability to anticipate questions.

An experienced product owner ensures that the team always knows which tasks deliver the most value—and why. The product vision translates, with or without a roadmap, directly into a prioritized and well-maintained backlog.

2. Collecting and translating requirements

The product owner maintains close contact with the business and translates its objectives into concrete product features. Without clear requirements, developers are forced to make assumptions, which leads to deviations from expectations.

An effective product owner also explains clearly why certain decisions are made. This creates engagement and motivates developers to contribute actively. By filtering and consolidating stakeholder requests into a single executable vision, noise is avoided and conflicting demands are kept out of the process.

3. Using resources efficiently

A good product owner maximizes value by keeping the team focused on the tasks with the highest impact. They prevent rework through clear requirements and actively guard against scope creep. The team must understand not only what it is building, but especially why.

Together with the development team, the product owner defines the standards that safeguard quality. Programming knowledge is not required, but having sufficient technical understanding helps support substantive discussions with developers. This fosters mutual respect and leads to better-founded decisions.

4. Organizing and prioritizing the backlog

The product owner owns the backlog, sets priorities, makes decisions, and demonstrates accountability. Without clear prioritization, delays in the roadmap are inevitable.

When new feature requests arise, the product owner evaluates the added business value, strategic relevance, and technical complexity. By making these considerations transparent to stakeholders, understanding and support within the organization increase.

5. Communicating effectively

Clear communication is the lifeline of nearshoring. An experienced product owner masters this by using the right tools, formulating requirements with complete clarity, and organizing structured touchpoints.

Predictable communication — such as daily stand-ups and weekly refinement sessions — is essential. In addition, the product owner must remain consistently available; waiting for answers leads to productivity loss and demotivation within the development team.

Regular visits to the team on-site are also valuable. The personal connection that develops helps prevent misunderstandings and strengthens collaboration.

6. Managing stakeholders effectively

The product owner serves as the central link between internal stakeholders (management, sales, marketing) and the development team. They balance different interests and protect the team from noise and conflicting requests, enabling developers to focus fully on building applications and features.

Effective stakeholdermanagement also requires the courage to say “no” to requests that disrupt the strategic direction. A product owner who remains consistent in decision-making builds trust with both management and the development team. 

7. Demonstrating decisiveness

Speed is essential in software development. A product owner who hesitates or must constantly seek approval creates delays. The organization must therefore give the product owner sufficient mandate to make decisions independently, supported by management.

With this mandate, the product owner can act decisively when uncertainties or disruptions arise. The self-regulating ability of both the product owner and the development team is crucial in this regard. The product owner’s decisiveness directly influences the speed at which business value is delivered.

Domain and business knowledge as a foundation

The best product owners combine tactical flexibility with strategic consistency. They adjust their approach when necessary, yet remain aligned with the organization’s objectives and overarching vision.

Domain and business knowledge are essential conditions for success. In a nearshoring context, a product owner is expected to have sufficient subject-matter understanding: of the industry, relevant legislation and regulations, and market conditions.

In practice, not every product owner possesses all required domain knowledge. In such cases, information is gathered from internal and external stakeholders to ensure projects can still be managed effectively. A product owner who operates in this manner is referred to as a proxy product owner.

The measurable impact of a strong product owner

Organizations with strong product owners achieve demonstrable improvements: a shorter time-to-market, more stable and motivated teams, and lower costs due to reduced rework and more efficient use of resources.

On the NetRom Campus in Romania, our development teams work daily with the client’s product owner to ensure the success of each software project. When an organization does not have sufficient capacity to fill the product owner role internally, NetRom can assist in finding a suitable professional. In addition, we can always provide a proxy product owner for the development team.

Discover how NetRom realises your digital ambitions

With more than 25 years of experience in nearshore software development, we know better than anyone how to work with product owners to deliver successful projects.

Would you like to learn how we can help realise your digital ambitions? Contact us using the form below to schedule a non-binding consultation.