Product Owner Responsibilities in Agile (Scrum Methodologies)
The Product owner is the main stakeholder in any agile software development project. The product owner is one of the four roles (scrum master, agile team & stakeholder)of the scrum framework for agile project management.
Product owner is someone with clear vision of product, defining those vision in form of well defined user stories, prioritising user stories together with team and estimating them have clear-time line of the product.
Product Owner Responsibilities
8 Essential Characteristics from being “Good” to be a “Best” Product Owner
1. From just being in loop to be engaged kind of leadership
— A good Product Owner is in the loop. But an engaged Product Owner is one that is not committed to the process, but the to the final product and its vision
2. From Baby sitting to letting the team to grow
— A good Product Owner is available to the team within reason. It is important to strike a good balance between baby-sitting the team and letting them grow on their own.
3. Informed about feature to vision
–A good Product Owner knows the features of a product. But the Best one have a full vision of product, customer feedback, market research and other stakeholders feedback.
4. Experienced through time
— Year(s) of experience is not the criteria, as failure is learning also. To be a best Product Owner you don’t have overseen multiple product life-cycle, you can learn from each sprint/release/iteration deliverables, as those small steps define your destiny
5. Introvert or Extrovert — Communicative
— When comes to product owner into or extra vert not matter, the best product owner is the one available every day to team to answer any question. Share feedback from customer, stakeholder or any other learning from customer visit or research.
6. Being Agile
— A good Product Owner is Agile. But the best Product Owner is the one who is not afraid of any change or improvements, means identify problem and reach faster.
7. Do which is not mandatory
—Attend daily scrum and retrospective regularly with respect the scrum culture, it will help you to identify the pain points of your own process
8. Clear Roadmap
— keep detail roadmap which is dynamic in nature.
In short product owner lead a team towards a vision, in small steps, regularly stopping along the way to check-in, adjust, calibrate and moving forward.
Responsibilities for the Product Owner
Some distinct responsibilities for the Product owner may include
- Creating and maintaining the Product backlog.
- Sort the Product backlog items according to priority.
- Help the Scrum Master organize Sprint Review Meetings.
- Attend sprint planning meetings.
- Clearly communicate the business requirements to the Team
- Get detail level of requirement from stakeholders or customers
- Build and maintain a relationship with the Stakeholders
Product Owner Common Mistakes
Some basic mistakes which Product Owner should avoid.
- Multiple Product Owners — If there are multiple Product Owners in any project, it is likely that none of them will be in charge of the overall product. This type of setup can lead in endless meetings with conflicting interests and politics.
- Stand-in Product Owner — A stand in Product Owner is a person acting on behalf of the actual Product Owner. Rather than delegating responsibility the Product Owner should be hands on and directly participate in work.
- Underpowered Product Owner — The Product Owner should have sufficient authority in order for the purpose of the role to be effectively fulfilled.
- Overworked Product Owner — The Product Owner should not be swamped with so much work that he/she becomes a bottleneck to the projects progress. Symptoms of an overworked product owner include neglecting product backlog grooming, missing sprint planning or review meetings, and not being available for questions.
Product Owner explained by best author of agile books
Now, similar to our previous entry on Scrum Master
We are going to have a detailed look at the responsibilities of Product Owner by looking the best agile books.
Do Better Scrum
by Peter Hundermark
The Scrum Product Owner’s primary responsibility is to optimize return on investment (ROI) by ensuring that the Scrum Team Members are engaged in delivering the currently most valuable product features
What Every Product Owner Should Know
Describe Product Owner characteristics as
“Scrum attempts to simplify the often confusing web of relationships through defining a clear set of roles and responsibilities.
Within the inner circle above, lies the Scrum Team. This includes the Product Owner, Scrum Master and the Team. Within this boundary there should be no barriers to communication. This team is collectively held accountable for the success of the product, and there should be an open dialogue between all its members.
… The Product Owner’s main focus of communication should be with customers (who pay the bill) and other stakeholders who may have an interest in the product.
Ensuring that their voices are heeded in the development of the product is vital to ensure the successful outcome. The Product Owner’s collaboration with customers, stakeholders and the team are the key to unlocking this value.”
Emphasis is placed on effective communication and collaboration.
Essential Scrum
by Kenneth S. Rubin’s
Highlighted Product Owner Skills As
“It doesn’t matter if the focus is on an external product or an internal application;
the product owner still has the obligation to make sure that the most valuable work possible, which can include technically focused work, is always performed.
To ensure that the team rapidly builds what the product owner wants, the product owner actively collaborates with the Scrum Master and development team and must be available to answer questions soon after they are posed.”
Over To You!
Skilful Product Owner help project to maneuver in difficult times, keep the project team toward the objective.
Those great author put valuable information from their experience in their book, so its worth reading those. Most of those books are FREE.
There must be 100's of other books, which we didn't mentioned. But if you happen to know one and think that other will benefit from reading it, then please leave a comment bellow with the link of your best book
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Originally published in Yodiz Blog
