The product owner is one of the three roles defined in Scrum:  Product Owner (PO), Scrum Master, and the Development Team.  The three combine to form the Scrum Team.

The PO synthesizes the needs of product sponsors, stakeholders, customers, and end users (which I refer to as the Stakeholder Community), with input from the Development Team, into a coherent, viable, and executable product vision.  The product vision guides Scrum Team decision making.

POs fill the “The Product Management Vacuum” between company/organizational vision and strategy and the work performed by development teams.  Effective POs lead conversations about which digital capabilities to develop and why.

Ineffective POs typically exemplify these four characteristics:

1. Lack understanding of the target business/mission/market
2. Lack a product vision
3. Struggle making tough choices
4. Are not empowered to make decisions

Lack Understanding of the Business / Mission / Market

The PO is “the voice of the customer” for the Scrum Team.  This means POs advocate for the needs, expectations, and desires of customers in the product’s business, mission, or market segment.  They define and communicate requirements from the perspective of customers and end users.  They can only do so if they posses a deep understanding of the relevant business, mission, or market.  In a choice between deep business, mission, or market understanding and technical knowledge, the former trumps the latter.

Ineffective POs lack intimate business, mission or market knowledge.  Thus, they often fall into a proxy role between Stakeholder Community members and the Scrum Team.  Rather than driving product vision definition in collaboration with the Stakeholder Community and the Scrum Team, they merely document requested features.  They struggle to explain the value of requested features or guide Scrum Teams as they learn the business, mission, or market domain.

Lack a Product Vision

A product vision communicates the desired end state of a product in business or mission terms.  Possessing a deep understanding of market, customer, and end-user needs is crucial but not enough.  The PO must leverage that understanding to develop and evolve a product vision.  An ineffective PO either does not see the value of developing a product vision or does not have the skills to do so.

Struggle Making Tough Choices

Making choices about the product is difficult without a clear product vision.  Having one enables the following decisions:

• Prioritization the Stakeholder Community needs, expectations, and desires
• Definition of features likely to address Stakeholder Community needs, expectations, and desires
• Prioritization of features into valuable deployable capabilities
• Determining which capabilities fit within product scope (when to say no)

A product cannot be all things to all people.  Tough decisions about what to include in a product offering are sometimes necessary.  Competing priorities and different levels of power or influence among Stakeholder Community members can make this difficult.  An effective PO fosters a collaborative atmosphere of give and take while holding firm to a carefully-crafted and evolving product vision.  This responsibility goes well beyond inventorying potential features.

Not Empowered to Make Decisions

The most glaring characteristic of ineffective POs is that they are often not empowered to make product decisions.  This goes back to the earlier point about POs playing a proxy role.  In this case, the proxy role is between the actual decision maker(s) and the Scrum Team.

If the PO does not “own” the product vision, someone else does.  Often, organizations cede ownership of the product vision to development teams.  This is a dangerous situation in any Scrum project because Scrum/Agile projects are primarily scope driven.  Without guidance, development teams implement what they think is important and necessary in ways that are most obvious and straightforward to them.  This leads to disconnects between what teams implement and the needs of the Stakeholder Community.  It also makes it difficult to determine the business or mission value of released capabilities and when capabilities are complete.

Conclusion

The PO brings together people, technology, and processes to develop valuable software capabilities.  A product is far more than a collection of related features.

In Scrum, the product is the result of continual verification, validation, and evaluation of increments of capability delivered iteratively. The product evolves cross increments and iterations/sprints based on an evolving product vision informed by input from the Stakeholder Community, development teams, and real-life results/outcomes attained.

Effective POs are empowered to lead product direction, possess enough business/mission knowledge to guide the Stakeholder Community and Development Team, and have the “soft skills” necessary to foster collaborative discussions about needs and negotiations over product features.

Last Updated on February 2, 2022