Dissecting product ownership

Many roles in IT are loosely defined, and responsibilities that go along with them are somewhat gray areas. The role of Product Owner (or PO as I’ll continue to abbreviate it) is one of these, and I believe the word owner in the name is partly responsible for misleading many who hear it. In this article, I want to unpack the notion of ownership, and how it relates to the attitude and skills of successful POs and teams.

Ownership

In its most common meaning ownership is a legal notion, it defines who has possession over something. In the case of a product, this is whoever owns the intellectual property rights. This kind of ownership is easy to understand and identify, and it generally means that the owner is entitled to make any decision about their product. I’d add to this definition by saying that the owner of anything is the one responsible for it. You’ve likely made this point if you have a child when discussing getting their first pet. It’s their pet, and that means they can enjoy the fun times but they also need to clean up the messes.

So what do POs own, or what are they responsible for? Usually, they are said to own the product backlog, or something similar. While the exact boundaries vary across organizations, the PO is often the person described as:

• the one translating the product vision into well-defined user stories
• the voice of the customer in the team
• the facilitator of transparent discussion and negotiation between parties
• in charge of ensuring that the delivered product matches expectations

Often POs are expected to be responsible for more than just these items. They may be expected to handle parts of the discovery or BA process, help product managers define the vision, help scrum teams with their ceremonies, optimize development processes, and other related tasks. It all depends on team and project size as well as the organization’s culture. Sometimes there is no PO role at all, and PMs, PDMs, and TLs take care of all of the above. In the end, the nomenclature is not the most important aspect, nevertheless, let me explain why I think it’s good to have the word owner in the name of this role.

Let’s take a step back and look at what the other meaning of ownership is. Many articles and talks encourage taking ownership at work, and of course, they don’t mean that you should try to acquire the company. Taking ownership in this sense means two things:

• showing that you care about the product by focusing on improving whatever you can about it proactively
• accepting responsibility for any outcome, good or bad

I think of it as the opposite attitude to not paying attention and doing only whatever you are told without regard to consequences. This kind of behavior might be enough to show that you care about keeping your job, but also that you’re not really engaged in making the most out of the product.

Conversely, taking ownership one step further, Jocko Willink, an author and former navy SEAL coined the term extreme ownership in his book with the same title, and its message could be summed up by never looking to push blame on others. Instead, he recommends owning up to any failure you could’ve reasonably helped avoid, actively seeking to correct it, and making sure it will not be repeated. He argues that this is the kind of ownership that everybody should exhibit, at work and in their personal lives (check out his TED talk here). Let’s look at what this means for a product owner.

Taking ownership as a PO

The first aspect, proactivity, is kind of a buzzword these days, but you shouldn’t interpret it as workaholism or giving up rest and personal time for work. It simply means that you keep your eyes open for opportunities to make things better, and act when you see them. POs are in charge of aligning everyone towards the same vision as well as ensuring that processes are efficient, so this kind of attitude on their behalf can have a huge impact on a product.

As for accountability, the role implies constant decision-making, which holds potential for both success and failure at every turn. This means that if you’re a proactive PO, who makes a lot of decisions, you’re bound to mess things up from time to time. You should be prepared, and instead of looking for excuses, you should accept responsibility and look for lessons learned. This is a good way of earning the trust and respect of people who depend on you and your work, and it’s worth the effort.

POs are in the perfect spot between the different teams and stakeholders to identify opportunities and advocate for action, but they will only do so if they have taken ownership. Having the word owner in their role is a good reminder that even though they are not the legal owners of the company or the product, they need to be ready to take ownership every day.

The team owns the product

As a closing thought, remember that a product or feature never has a single owner in this sense, and neither does a company. This kind of metaphorical ownership isn’t exclusive, and this is why it also makes sense to me that roles sometimes overlap. If you can inspire everyone on your team to avoid playing blame games and to push for improvements wherever they see opportunities, both team morale, and product quality will increase dramatically. At that point, the team owns the product, and that’s the way it should be, that’s what each team member should be encouraged to do, whether they have the word owner in their role or not.