Product owners do evolve
When a development team transform to agile scrum, it’s a big challenge for the client to play the product owner role. Many of our clients faced this hurdle, but majority were succeeded. There is a learning curve when transforming from the typical client in to product owner. Dedication is also an important factor behind the path of becoming a good PO. Below are few important points that can be helpful when evolving as a PO.
1. Lengthy requirements in to user stories
Clients are used to write requirements in a requirements spec or in a lengthy paragraphs. But in scrum you have to write each requirement as a user’s story, where as a ‘role’ ‘what’ has to be done and for which ‘purpose’ or the value. This is really simple but very productive as developers will understand the whole purpose of the given feature. The best thing is, it helps developer to think from the user’s point of view and build the feature so that it’s more usable and user-friendly.
2. Ambiguous requirements in to clear acceptance criteria
As mentioned earlier PO has to be trained on how to write the requirement in a user story. Here PO can write requirement as an acceptance criteria under each user story. Acceptance criteria are requirements that has to complete in order to accept the feature. This has to write in simple language so that everyone get understand.
3. Whole product or most important features first
‘Prioritizing work’ is the most important part in scrum. PO’s main responsibility is to prioritize the most important requirements that has to be delivered soon. At every sprint PO has to prioritize the backlog based on the business value of the requirement. This helps them to deliver the minimum viable product soon and get the advantage in the market.
4. Bosses to guiders
Not as in earlier days PO is not the boss. He/she also have to work with the team in achieving the business goals. For this PO should have to have team work skills and team mindset to build up a good relationship with the team. That helps other team members to contact PO to get things clarified and to give suggestions for betterment of the product.
