Product owner
A product owner (hereinafter, the Owner) is an individual, group, and/or organization that provides a product developer or developers with the vision of the product to be developed.
Contents
Roles
In order to provide developers with the product vision, the Owner shall (1) develop the vision for the product and (2) communicate that vision to the developer or developers.
Lead user
- The Owner is commonly a lead user of the system or someone from marketing, product management or anyone with a solid understanding of users, the market place, the competition and of future trends for the domain or type of system being developed.
Stakeholder
- In the agile methodology, the Owner is typically a project's key stakeholder. Both having a vision of what he or she wishes to build and conveying that vision to the development team are keys to successfully starting any agile development project.
Backlog developer
- The Owner has final authority in development of the product backlog, which is a prioritized features list for the product. The Owner is responsible for maintaining, prioritizing and updating the product backlog.
Liaison
- On the one side, the Owner represents the customer's interest in backlog prioritization and requirements questions. On the other side, the Owner must be available to the team at any time, but especially during the Sprint planning meeting and the Sprint review meeting.
Common duties
- Using the DAMP, the Owner's duties can be divided in four groups.
Discovering
- Attending team coordination meetings
- Being involved with ongoing testing efforts
- Research and analyze market, the users, and the roadmap for the product
- Follow our competitors and the industry
- Keep abreast with Agile/Scrum best practices and new trends
5. Represents the customer, interfaces and engages the customer. The Product Owner must continuously engage the customer and stakeholders to ensure the Team is building the right product and therefore delivering the ROI expected of it. The Product Owner has the opportunity to steer the team in a different direction at the end of every Sprint, so he/she must be ready to do just that if necessary.
6. Acting as primary liaison. The product owner is also the primary communicator and link between stakeholders and teams. As such, they have to be expert communicators, making sure there’s buy-in from stakeholders on all major decisions and strategy and clear instructions and deliverables for the developers.
7. Inspects the product progress at the end of every Sprint and has complete authority to accept or reject work done. Work that is either not complete or un-done needs to be re-prioritized or sequenced. An Agile PM is one who is quick to recognize and understand change and to ensure the Product Team adapts to the change in landscape, be it competition, target market or other.
Analyzing
Doing sufficient analysis to ensure requirements are ready to be worked on
Modeling
Planning
- Expresses product backlog items in product backlog.
- Prioritizes product backlog items in product backlog while aiming to best achieve (a) objectives of the project, (b) value of the developers' work, and (c) and missions of the performing organization.
- Ensures that the product backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the development team will work on next.
- Ensures that the development team understands product backlog items in the product backlog to the level needed.
3. Assists with the elaboration of Epics, Themes and Features into user stories that are granular enough to be achieved in a single sprint. User Stories are elaborated at the last responsible moment and it is the Product Owners responsibility to be there during the Sprint Planning meeting to help the teams to understand exactly what is required.
4. Conveys the Vision and Goals at the beginning of every Release and Sprint. The Product Owner must continuously remind the Team of the Sprint and Release goals. This helps to keep the team on track and serves as an over-arching yardstick for the team to measure their activity and progress against.
Challenges
On the Owners' side
- Challenges of being the Owner are:
- Resisting the temptation to "manage" the team. The team may not self-organize in the way you would expect it to. This is especially challenging if some team members request your intervention with issues the team should sort out for itself.
- Resisting the temptation to add more important work after a Sprint is already in progress.
- Being willing to make hard choices during the sprint planning meeting.
- Balancing the interests of competing stakeholders.
On organization's side
- Challenges of being the organization that hires the Owner are:
- Clear defining who the Owner is -- an individual, a group such as a committee, or another organization. Sometimes, the Owner represents the desires of a committee in the product backlog, so those wanting to change any product backlog items' priority must connect with the Owner.
- Respecting the Owner's decisions. In order to get development as efficient as possible, no one shall be able to force the development team to work from a different set of requirements.
