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.
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Nature of work
In order to provide developers with the product vision, the Owner shall (1) hold the vision for the product and (2) communicate that vision to the developer or developers.
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.
In agile projects
- 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.
- The Owner does this in part through the product backlog, which is a prioritized features list for the product. The Owner is responsible for maintaining, prioritizing and updating the product backlog.
- The Owner has final authority representing the customer's interest in backlog prioritization and requirements questions. This person must be available to the team at any time, but especially during the Sprint planning meeting and the Sprint review meeting.
Owners' challenges
- 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.
