When I coach companies on Scrum and Agile Methodologies, I’m used to having dedicated, co-located Product Owners and teams. Lately it seems, especially with large corporations involved in an Agile transition, Product Owners and Scrum Masters are leading multiple project teams; often they are not co-located. It can be challenging when trying to coach teams on Agile Manifesto values, such as: Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools. Often during these transitions, companies expect a PO to be a part-time Product Owner: doing PO work in addition to his/her day (or real) job. Many times I have had Product Owners ask me to help justify their full-time involvement so that their supervisors understand the extent of the time commitment involved with the role. I have done this by describing what a typical Product Owner does each day. So in this post, I am going to jot down a (by no means exhaustive) list of what a Product Owner does on a daily basis (in no specific order):
- Attends the team’s daily planning meeting (aka standup) to understand the team’s progress and issues towards the sprint goals.
- Captures customer requirements (and wish lists) by writing (or helping others write) User Stories.
- Accepts/rejects completed User Stories.
- Prioritize and update the backlog.
- Is available to the team each day to answer questions and clarify stories.
- Verifies that stories are in the proper format, contain valid confirmation (aka Acceptance Criteria), and are in-line with the product vision and scope. This includes any necessary design details, business rules, etc.
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Makes sure that project/product vision and goals are clearly defined and communicated to everyone.
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Works with the team to ensure stories meet the agreed upon “Definition of Ready” before pulling them into the sprints.
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Helps remove obstacles that the team and Scrum Master cannot remove.
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Makes sure that the Scrum Team has a direct connection with end users through story development and the Sprint Review.
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Keeps stakeholders informed on project status and how much value has been generated for money spent.
In addition to that, on a bi-weekly or as needed basis:
- Participate in the demo and retrospective meetings.
- Work with the team to groom the Release backlog.
- Work with the team to plan the iterations.
- Meets with customers and stakeholders on a regular basis to field questions and inform them of project/product updates and changes.
- Conducts the Sprint demo with the team to present the incremental functionality to users and stakeholders.
Feel free (or compelled) to add your own. My thanks to Bob Schatz @Agileinfusion for his sage advice and input.
