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.

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
• Works with stakeholders to identify and organize the steps required for the next iteration. They will then meet with their team to refine the process, identify areas for improvement, and support the sprint.
• 6. Participates in the daily Scrums, Sprint Planning Meetings and Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives. There’s always a lot going on and always an excuse to miss the meetings. But each of these Scrum ceremonies is another chance for the Product Owner to inspect and adapt. And as a result being present at these ceremonies is tantamount to success.
• With the vision, strategy, and product priorities set, the product owner should spend a significant amount of time overseeing the actual development of the product. They are a key player throughout each event, including planning, refinement, review, and sprint.
• 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
• 5. Anticipating client needs. The successful product owner will be an expert at understanding and anticipating the client’s needs to more effectively manage the development process. Their deep market knowledge and communication skills allow them to anticipate problems or needs and address them.
• 7. Evaluating product progress at each iteration. The product owner is accountable for each stage of the development process and the final product. They take a primary role in inspecting and evaluating product progress through each iteration. The product owner makes the judgment call on the performance, deciding if the team needs to go back to the drawing board or if they can move on to the next steps.

Modeling

• Define product vision, road-map and growth opportunities
• Having assessed values, develop cases, and prioritize stories, epics and themes to ensure work focuses on those with maximum value that are aligned with product strategy
• 10. Terminates a Sprint if it is determined that a drastic change in direction is required e.g. a competitor releases a new version which demands a counter response. This is a pretty serious event for Scrum teams. And what this means “technically” is that all work done up until that point is lost. I have not seen this done to many times in my career especially since, there’s really not that much time between Sprints in any event.
• 3. Prioritizing needs. Another key role of the product owner is to prioritize needs. In other words, they must juggle the triangle of scope, budget, and time, weighing priorities according to the needs and objectives of stakeholders. For example, if the product under development needs to launch within six months, that constrains the scope of the project. As the project evolves, the product owner will have to gauge which areas have flexibility and which don’t to determine how and when each iteration and product element will be developed.

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.
• Organizing demos

Backlog

1. Creates and MAINTAINS the Product Backlog I emphasize MAINTAINS as this is an on-going job and more than likely a full-time activity. Nothing is constant in the world of software and it’s important that the Product Owner keeps his/her eye on the ball. Note: the Product Backlog must be groomed prior to the Sprint Planning Meeting in order for the team to remain productive.

2. Prioritizes and sequences the Backlog according to business value or ROI (there are lots of tools to help Product Owners do this and lots of books on the subject) The Product Owner is required to have the Backlog sequenced prior to the Sprint Planning Meeting. This means that each user story must be ordered by relative importance. It’s no good to have 5 high priority or 5 medium priorities. It’s important to know which User story is #1, which is #2 etc.

8. Can change the course of the project at the end of every Sprint (30 days if you’re following traditional Scrum methodology by the book). The Product Owner is in complete control and can steer the team in a completely different direction at Sprint boundaries. And good Agile teams will welcome this change as long as the Product Owner is confident and knowledgeable.

9. Communicates status externally. The product owner is the voice of the Team to the outside world and should ensure that all channels of communications are open and that projects have the right amount of support required to succeed.

The responsibilities of the Product Owner are onerous and there is no one else on the team to cover for him/her or pick up the slack. So if you’re choosing a Product Owner, choose wisely, the difference can be success or failure for the entire project or, in the worst of circumstances, the success or failure of the company.

Take lead of scrum teams as the Product Owner Providing vision and direction to the Agile development team and stakeholders throughout the project and create requirements

   Ensure that the team always has an adequate amount of prior prepared tasks to work on
   Plan and prioritize product feature backlog and development for the product
   Provide backlog management, iteration planning, and elaboration of the user stories
   Work closely with Product Management to create and maintain a product backlog according to business value or ROI
   Lead the planning product release plans and set expectation for delivery of new   functionalities
   Provide an active role in mitigating impediments impacting successful team completion of Release/Sprint Goals

Product owners are responsible for communicating with stakeholders across the board, including customers, business managers, and the development team to make sure the goals are clear and the vision is aligned with business objectives.

Having a product owner with a higher perspective ensures that the team maintains a cohesive vision despite the flexible and often fast-paced nature of agile product development. Everyone needs to be on the same page in order for a project to work effectively.

A product owner can help the team maintain that vision is by creating a product roadmap. The product roadmap is a high-level, strategic visual summary that outlines the vision and direction for the product offering over time. It is both a strategic guide for stakeholders to reference as well as a plan for execution.

2. Managing the product backlog

One of the most important responsibilities for a product owner is managing the product backlog. This is the development team’s project to-do list.

The product owner’s responsibility is to create the list of backlog items and prioritize them based on the overall strategy and business objectives. Additionally, the product owner will need to map out project dependencies to inform the necessary sequence of development.

The product backlog isn’t a static to-do list though. It is a live document that should be continually updated based on evolving project needs throughout development.

Because the product backlog will change frequently, the product owner must make the list accessible and available to all stakeholders (particularly developers) to ensure optimized performance and project outcomes.

Challenges

On the Owners' side

Challenges of being the Owner are:

1. 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.
2. Resisting the temptation to add more important work after a Sprint is already in progress.
3. Being willing to make hard choices during the sprint planning meeting.
4. Balancing the interests of competing stakeholders.

On organization's side

Challenges of being the organization that hires the Owner are:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Related lectures

• Project Management Quarter.