Product Owner
The Product Owner is one of the three accountabilities inside a Scrum Team. One person holds the accountability. They are accountable for maximising the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team. They ensure the Scrum Team is building the right things in the correct order. How this is carried out will vary widely in practice.
The Product Owner is accountable for effectively managing the Product Backlog, an evolving list of valuable improvements for the product. Management of the Product Backlog includes:
- Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal and the long-term objective for the product.
- Creating and communicating Product Backlog items.
- Ordering Product Backlog items to ensure the most critical work is completed first.
- Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood by the Scrum Team and stakeholders.
The Product Owners may do all those things or delegate responsibility to others (typically Developers in the Scrum Team). Regardless of who manages the Product Backlog’s day-to-day management, the Product Owner remains accountable.
The Product Owner’s decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog. The value the Product Owner has helped create is made accurate and transparent via the Increment. For Scrum to succeed and deliver value efficiently, the organisation must recognise, respect and support the Product Owner.
As an organisation develops trust in the empirical approach that Scrum brings, Product Owners may become like a “mini CEO” for the product. They will be empowered to make tactical, near real-time decisions on the product’s future direction based on data and insights that emerge from the Scrum Team as they do their work.
The product owner is responsible for product strategy. They are not, however, responsible for the development process and how the work gets Done. The Developers take on responsibility for this.
Although not prescribed by Scrum specifically, effective Product Owners typically exhibit these characteristics:
- They define and communicate the goal and strategy of the product they wish to build.
- They have a good understanding of customers, users, the business, the marketplace, the competition, and future trends for the product.
- They are effective communicators and facilitators, enabling stakeholders to make decisions despite limited data or information.
- They are decision-makers who can say no or not now and explain why they have reached a decision.
Being a Product Owner can be challenging. The team may build the wrong thing if the Product Owner makes a bad decision. Significant waste will result. Product Owners need support from the Scrum Team and stakeholders to succeed. Making information and decisions transparent, combined with frequent inspection and adaptation around options and decisions, will increase the probability of success.
Although it is somewhat oversimplified, it can be helpful to think of the Product Owner as accountable for the “what”. They ultimately decide on what product is developed in the Scrum Team.