What is a Product Owner in Scrum

Scrum defines only three roles for particpants on a Scrum team; Product Owner, Team Member and Scrum Master.  In my experience, the Product Owner role is the least well-understood.  Some even call into question the need for this role at all on some projects.  I believe that "Product Owner" is a label for a cluster of responsibilities that may resident in individuals with such wide-ranging titles as "Procurement Manager", "Program Manager", "Product Manager", "Business Analyst" or "Chief Architect".  This role represents what a fast-moving development team needs to maintain maximum velocity while delivering maximum business value.  When I was asked to identify the key success factors for a Product Owner on a Scrum team.  This was my answer:

 

The core responsibilities of the product owner are:

• Be available (especially to the team) to clearly explain the product requirements and communicate exactly what will be acceptable to the stakeholders. 
• Have the authority and responsibility for consolidating all stakeholder needs into a coherent prioritized (and constantly re-prioritized) requirements backlog.

There are many supporting responsibilities that ideally are handled by the product owner, but may be handled by other supporting members of the organization as long the final decision, and responsibility for the results of that decision, rest with the product owner directly.  These include:

• Developing relationships with key customers and representatives of important market segments 
• Understanding the details of the problem domain that the product addresses 
• Understanding the technical trade-offs of various potential solutions and strategies 
• Balancing the timing of feature delivery to maximize cost/benefit over time 
• Coordinating the product strategy with collaborating products and teams 
• Coordinating dependencies and contributions between products for collective benefit

This requires strong leadership and negotiating skills.  Close trust-based working relationships with the team members is greatly beneficial.  Management and incentive structures must be in place to balance the desire for functionality with the realistic constraints on the resources required (especially time) to deliver that functionality.  This is most often seen in the form of "pressure" to deliver more in less time, with the implicit reduction of quality that leads to non-sustainable development practices and higher costs over the life of the product.

 

Here are links to a few online articles that add important details to this description.

• www.scrumforteamsystem.com/ProcessGuidance/Roles/ProductOwner.html
• www.scrumalliance.org/articles/44-being-an-effective-product-owner
• blog.lundak.org/2006/12/15/the-under-rated-product-owner-role/
• www.agilejournal.com/articles/articles/the-product-owner:-choosing-the-right-person-for-the-job.html

Comments

[David]

Hi Dale,

I like your take on the product owner. Your article shows the delicate role that the product owner has.

I think the choice of Product Owner can greatly affect a project. The balance between the stakeholders and the development teams needs to be maintained, to ensure the deliverables are being met to the customer satisfaction, but without reduction in quality which can be caused by overkill from an overzealous Product Owner. As you say, a 'collective benefit' needs to occur.

Regards,
David
http://www.jacksguides.com

[Jim Dale]

So where's Nick Hodges blog?

[Laura Brandau]

Nice article and I especially agree with the point that the product owner needs to be the final decision maker, but will be supported by a myriad of contributors. For most projects, the product owner role would be way to cumbersome if one person was required to actually do all that was necessary to meet the accountabilities.

Laura
www.bridging-the-gap.com