The Scrum Team and the Product Owner
The team model in Scrum is designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity. It is not about avoiding mistakes, it is about correcting them quickly. The Scrum Team consists of a formal Product Owner, a Development Team, and a Scrum Master. Each has a different role to play in the scrum process. This is different from the way most blockchain projects are organized, which either follow a hierarchical structure or follow no social structure.
To be most productive, Scrum Teams must be self-organizing and cross-functional.
• Self-organizing teams determine for themselves how to best organize their work, rather than being directed by team outsiders who don’t have the same responsibilities to the Product Owner.
• Cross-functional teams have all needed competencies to accomplish the work without depending on anyone who is not part of the team.
Scrum Teams maximize opportunities for feedback. They develop the product in chunks, because incremental deliveries of working product ensure usable results.
The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product. What this means will vary between different organizations, teams, and even individuals.
The Product Owner is the person responsible for managing the Product Backlog which is a very specific term in Scrum. Product Backlog management includes tasks that contribute to both transparency and inspection, including:
• Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;
• Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve the Product vision;
• Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team delivers;
• Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to everyone;
• Shows what the Scrum Team will working on next
• Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog.
The Product Owner may do the work or have the Development Team do it. The Product owner keeps the Development team honest and must be the ultimate holder of the vision of the product. To be effective, the Product Owner needs to be accountable and empowered which means they suffer the consequences if the project goes off the rails.
Therefore, it is vital the Product Owner be just one person, not a committee, to ensure accountability. On most projects you would hope the Product Owner is consulting with his or her constituents about the product, but they are not required to do so. The Product Owner can also represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog. But anyone on the committee who wants to change the priorities must work through the Product Owner and not go around them.
For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect his or her decisions. The Product Owner’s decisions are visible in how the Product Backlog is described and prioritized. No one should force the Development Team to work from another set of requirements. If they do, then chaos ensues, since no man can serve two masters.
