Product Owner

Intermediate

difficulty

Stage 1-2

Agile IQ® Level

Roles

Governance

Scrum

Framework

Introduction

The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team. How this is done may vary widely across organisations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.

Accountabilities

The Product Owner is also accountable for effective Product Backlog management, which includes:

Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal.
Creating and clearly communicating Product Backlog items.
Ordering Product Backlog items.
Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood.

The Product Owner may do the above work or may delegate the work to others. to do. Regardless, the Product Owner remains accountable.

For Product Owners to succeed, the entire organisation must respect their decisions. These decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog, and through the inspectable Increment at the Sprint Review.

EXPECTATIONS

Managing the Delivery through Product Backlog

Release Planning, producing roadmaps, understanding milestones and deadlines are part of the Product Owner’s day-to-day work.

Manage the budget

The team is expected to be long-lived. This also means the team has a fixed operational cost per Sprint. With this cost, the Product Owner must determine how best to spend their money and what is of value to deliver Sprint to Sprint.

Myths about the role

The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the needs of many stakeholders in the Product Backlog. One person in the role results in clarity regarding priorities, the direction of the product, and what is of value to deliver Sprint to Sprint. When more than one person attempt to fulfil the role, delays in decision-making results, and confuses the team regarding what the priorities are.

Those wanting to change the Product Backlog can do so by engaging the Product Owner and helping the Product Owner understand the value and relative priority of what they need.

Product Owners aren’t expected to:

Write all of the Product Backlog items. They are not the team’s “business analyst”.

Download

Download the Product Owner Checklist (PDF) to print and use in your team design.

References

1. Aaron, J. R., McDowell, W.C., and Herdman, A. O. (2014) The Effects of a Team Charter on Student Team Behaviors. The Journal of Education for Business 89(2):90-97

2. Dowling, K. (2003). Chartering your team for peak performance. In M. M.Beyerlein, C. McGee, D. Klein, J. E. Nemiro, & L. Broedling (Eds.), The collaborative work systems ﬁeldbook (pp. 77–87). San Francisco, CA:Wiley