Knowledge Base / Scrum Team / Product Owner / What does the Product Owner do?
The Product Owner manages the definition of the product
Throughout the course of product development, the Product Owner maintains frequent contact with customers and other stakeholders to identify and understand the most important problems the product will solve. With the support of the Developers, the Product Owner continually seeks to measure and understand how users are using the product, which is being delivered to them incrementally, and what can best meet their next most important needs. Based on this, the PO decides, at any given time, which features and behaviors will be implemented, inserting them as items in an ordered list called the Product Backlog.
The Product Owner is accountable for managing the Product Backlog and has authority over it – that is, the PO has the final word on what will be done. She creates, updates, orders, and reorders its items as she sees fit. The Product Owner also removes those items that are no longer needed and therefore should not be implemented. She ensures the transparency, clarity of the Product Backlog for the Developers, who should be able to understand what will come next and influence the decisions.
The Product Owner collaborates with the Developers to make decisions regarding the product and can delegate to them, even if only in part, this Product Backlog management work. The greater the maturity of the Developers as a group and the greater their mastery of the business, the more of this work the Product Owner can delegate to them. Depending on the level of delegation, their participation can range from effectively supporting the Product Owner’s work in defining the product, offering their ideas and perspective on what should be implemented, to directly making important product decisions.
The 2020 edition of the Scrum Guide also opens the possibility for the Product Owner to delegate the work of managing the Product Backlog to other people (SCHWABER; SUTHERLAND, 2020). Nevertheless, I strongly recommend that this work be restricted to the members of the Scrum Team.
Regardless of how much and to whom the work of managing the Product Backlog is delegated, the Product Owner remains accountable for its results.
Sprint after Sprint, the Product Owner and the Developers work together to ensure that the next items ordered by the Product Owner will be ready to be implemented, in sufficient detail and with fine granularity. They do this refinement work together. Alternatively, the Product Owner may delegate to the Developers, in whole or in part, the responsibility for interacting directly with the customers and other stakeholders in order to do this.
The Developers also directly influence the Product Owner’s decisions by providing a view of what is technically possible, the implementation effort required for each Product Backlog item and what additional technical work may be needed. It is up to the Developers to identify any technical work items that may be necessary – such as updating certain supporting software, testing a new tool or a structural improvement of some part of the product, for example – and suggesting to the Product Owner its insertion into the Product Backlog. In principle, after seeking to understand what needs to be understood with the Developers, the Product Owner decides whether these items will actually be implemented, and when.
As part of the work in managing the product definition, the Product Owner needs to explicitly communicate the established Product Goal and ensure that everything that will be implemented is aligned with it.
It is common for the Product Owner to develop a more formal strategy for product development to achieve the Product Goal. The strategy, like the product development itself, evolves iteratively and incrementally and helps the PO make the necessary decisions about what to implement.
One possible format for the product development strategy is a product roadmap, which describes the expected future of the product at a high level. In the roadmap, a probable date for each release is set along with the goal to be carried out in each of the releases or milestones (see the section Intermediate goals in the chapter Commitment: Product Goal).
Discussion: Is the Product Owner a proxy for the customers?
Contrary to what we observe in countless organizations:
- The Product Owner is not a proxy for the customers (SCHWABER, 2011), stakeholders, or anyone else.
- The Product Owner is not a communication channel or bridge to the customers or other stakeholders.
- The Product Owner does not solely represent the customers or stakeholders.
- The Product Owner does not take orders or tickets from the customers or stakeholders.
The Product Owner is, in fact, the one who has the ultimate accountability for defining what will be implemented. She has the authority and knowledge of the techniques necessary to do so in a way that can satisfy the customers’ needs. The PO understands that she cannot achieve this goal by simply fulfilling the desires and wishes of customers or other stakeholders.
The Product Owner must, of course, listen to the various stakeholders and consider their wishes and expectations, ensuring they feel heard and understood. As we will see below, this is a part of stakeholder management. However, she must avoid letting the product definition process become request oriented.
Keep in mind that customers and stakeholders often do not generally know what they need. Additionally, different stakeholders may have varied and sometimes conflicting needs. In such cases, the Product Owner needs to strive for a balance. Therefore, the Product Owner is responsible for collaborating with Developers to discover, define, and validate solutions in conjunction with users, customers, and stakeholders throughout the entire work.