Responsibilites of a Product Owner in Scrum
Filed Under Product, Product Backlog, Product Management, Product Owner, Requirements, Scrum | Posted on January 27, 2010
The Product Owner is a critical person as per Scrum, since the Product Owner is a representative of the Product Management team, and represents the interests of the customers, is the interface for the team with the whole process of requirements / features, and also owns the Product Backlog. Here are some more details of what the Product Owner does:
- Owns the Product Backlog. One of the most important tasks of the Product Owner is to maintain the Product Backlog, the list of features / requirements that are pending to be implemented. At the start of the project, this is the entire list of features, and as features are implemented, the Product Owner needs to keep on ensuring that the remaining features are prioritized as per the market / customer requirements. Keeping the Product Backlog maintained gives the team great visibility in terms of which features are more important, and which are less important. Further, it is also the responsibility of the Product Owner to ensure that the features in the Product Backlog are detailed to a more granular level as the Sprint in which they are to be implemented comes closer. Further, they need to work with the team to ensure that the Product Backlog features that are coming closer to implementation have size estimates. The Product Owner also has to ensure that the Product Backlog has a proper mix of the features and certain non-feature engineering tasks (such as incorporating newer versions of components, or upgradation of tools)
- Bringing the customer focus: The Product Owner is the one that has to ensure that the team knows as much about the customer needs as possible. This includes working with the designer for getting the workflow right, includes answering the large number of questions asked during the Sprint Planning meeting so that the team can give more accurate estimates. This also involves working closely with the team so that their work reflects the customer needs, and any confusion / errors are quickly pointed out and corrected. At the end of the Sprint cycle, when the demo of the created product features are given, the Product Owner should be completely honest, and give feedback keeping the customer needs in mind.
- Giving the vision to the team. A lot of people believe that the Scrum Master is the one who runs the Scrum team, and while this may be true in a number of cases, the Scrum Master works more towards the execution of the project. It is the Product Owner who provides the vision, who works with the team to ensure that they hear quickly of market changes, who delivers information that validates the path that the team is working towards, who is giving the team the exact nature of the customer. Think of it as providing the overall large picture to the team, something that works extremely well in increasing their morale as well.
|
|
|
If you are interested in software processes, find this post informative, and want to learn more, why not subscribe ?
Subscribe in a readerSubscribe to get updates by Email
Leave a Reply
