What is Agile Product Owner?
An Agile Product Owner is the central figure in the development cycle, the project's key stakeholder, and the leader that maximizes the product value. A Product Owner can be also the product’s lead user, represent the marketing team or just have a solid knowledge of the market, the competition, and the trends in the corresponding domain.
Conceived as part of Scrum, this role, or accountability, has expanded to other Agile frameworks, such as, for example, Scaled Agile Framework.
Responsibilities of the Product Owner
1. Managing the product backlog
Managing the product backlog is considered to be the chief responsibility of the Product Owner. A product backlog is a to-do list for the team, which consists of prioritized backlog items, or tasks, ranked according to the business strategy and objectives. To maximize the value, the Product Owner sketches the sequence of development taking into account project dependencies.
2. Prioritizing needs and objectives
The other side of maintaining the product backlog is to adjust priorities to respond to the stakeholder’s needs, at the same time, making most of the scope, allocated budget, and available time
3. Defining the product vision
The Product Owner is responsible for the high-level goals and the direction of the product development. The general vision of the product is communicated with stakeholders, including customers and managers, and the team to define the objectives and make them economically feasible. This is achieved with a product roadmap, a strategic summary that serves as a reference for stakeholders and as an execution plan for developers.
4. Leading communication between the team and stakeholders
The Agile Product Owner is the primary link between developers, business managers, and customers. Their responsibility is to reach agreement and stakeholders’ approval of all crucial decisions and obtain clear instructions for the development team.
5. Evaluating product progress
Since the Product Owner holds responsibility for the product at each stage of the development, they oversee the development process, inspect and evaluate the team’s progress, and define areas for improvement.
Product Owner’s Skills
The Agile Product Owner is an individual of several talents: to be successful in their roles, they need to have specific traits, such as business shrewdness, communication skill, and availability.
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Business shrewdness is critical for the Product Owner who is responsible for making decisions on the product features and the order of their development. For this, the PO needs to be able to analyze the market and the competition and see the emerging trends.
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Communication makes up a large part of the PO’s responsibilities. Since they are collaborating with the development team and the stakeholders within the company and beyond, they need to convey messages to the all and ensure that the common ground is found.
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Availability to the team is an important trait that shows commitment and engagement with the team’s working process, victories, and hardships.
Takeaways
The Agile Product Owner role is a critical role within agile teams that maximizes the product value by working closely with the developers and with stakeholders to find the balance between the available resources and the acceptable level of the product quality.
