Decoding the Role of the Product Owner
A common question I often encounter is, “What exactly is a product owner?”
While I understand this question may seem straightforward, there’s more to it than meets the eye. 🤔
Accountability Beyond a Title
A product owner isn’t just a fancy job title you’ll find on business cards or email signatures. Instead, it’s an accountability. 🌟
So, you might not find someone wearing a badge stating, “I’m the product owner.
It’s about the accountabilities someone in your organisation takes on, with the central focus being accountable for maximising the value of work done by the scrum team. 🎯
Understanding and Maximising Value
But what does this “value” mean?
It isn’t just about ordering a product backlog.
The core essence of a product owner lies in maximising the value of work done by the scrum team. It’s not merely about ordering a product backlog - that’s just a tiny, mechanical element of this vast accountability.
The real challenge in your specific organisational context is discerning what product ownership means.
How do we amplify the value of our work? 📈
And yes, that takes a lot more than just managing a list! 📊
Staying Connected
A product owner isn’t just about the ’now’. They’re the pulse of where the product is heading and the heartbeat of the strategy. A product owner needs a deep understanding of the market, insights into product usability, customer feedback, and much more.
It’s all about tuning into every signal that might impact our project’s direction and success. They’re the ones responsible for setting the tone for product leadership and the strategic direction.
The more informed the product owner is, the better the strategic direction and the resonance with the market. 🌐
Aligning Vision and Direction
One of the greatest challenges I’ve observed is teams delivering products that neither resonate with stakeholders nor customers. 🧭
This misalignment is where the product owner becomes indispensable. They ensure everyone, from customers to developers, is aligned toward a shared vision, goal, and strategy.
Unified Direction
In Scrum, the product owner is ideally one individual, not a committee. Yet, they might lead a committee, offering another intriguing layer to this role.
We see variations of product owners across industries, some transitioning from software engineers, some from scrum masters, while others might represent customers directly. 🚀
Regardless of the background, the ultimate aim remains the same: to steer everyone in one clear, unified direction.
Why Are They Essential?
If teams aren’t delivering products that stakeholders understand and customers love, there’s a misalignment.
The product owner’s vitality ensures everyone involved in a product is moving cohesively toward a shared goal. They embody the strategy, vision, and direction. If we’re not all rowing in the same direction, how can we reach our destination successfully?
That’s the magic of a product owner. 💡
Unveiling More Layers of Scrum and Agile
I’d love to share more insights and guidance for those intrigued by the intricacies of Scrum and Agile roles.
Join me in my Agile and Scrum courses to uncover the depth and breadth of these roles.
So the question is, what is a product owner? And that is again an interesting question because the product owner is an accountability, so not a job title, right? So I wouldn’t expect to see somebody whose job title is product owner, and I wouldn’t expect to see somebody walking around going, “You know, I’m the product owner.” But the product owner accountabilities are something that somebody in your organisation picks up, and it’s being accountable for maximising the value of the work done by the Scrum team.
So that doesn’t mean they’re called product owner; it doesn’t mean that they only focus on product ownership, right? They probably have other focuses as well, but it also means that other things need to be true in order for that to be successful, right? Maximising the value of the work done by the Scrum team is not ordering a product backlog, right? That’s a small mechanical element of that accountability.
In your context, right, your corporate context, your organisational context, you’re going to have to figure out what does product ownership mean in our business, right? How do we maximise the value of the work done? Do we need to understand the market? Do we need to be plugged into an understanding of what’s happening in the market and what direction it’s going? Do we need to be plugged into an understanding of how people are actually using our product and interacting with it in different ways? Do we need to be plugged into what our customers are saying, right? That’s another piece of information that might be helpful.
And the answer is you have to plug into all of that and much more, right? The more understanding that the product owner, the person who’s picking up the accountability of the product owner, has of what’s going on in the world that may impact on what it is that we’re working on, what it is that we’re doing.
So the product owner is absolutely essential as they kind of set that tone for product leadership, for strategic direction of the product, for building something that really resonates with the market. And if it resonates with the market, that means it’s resonating with your customers, that your stakeholders understand what it is you’re working on, what they’re doing, that everything is being communicated openly and transparently so we all understand where we’re going. We’re all going in the same direction. These are all things that that product owner, that accountability of the product owner, is meant to represent.
Now, in Scrum, the product owner is one person, not a committee, although they may chair a committee, right? I thought that was an interesting caveat. But in the world, I see lots of different types of product owners. I see part product owners that are from the customer. If you’re a professional services company, your customer is a product owner. You might have a proxy product owner that liaises with that customer. You might have somebody on your team who is the product owner who was a software engineer who is now becoming a product owner. You might have somebody who was a Scrum Master who’s now a product owner. You might have nothing at all, right? And there’s a big gap. And how can you be successful if we’re not all going in the same direction? That gap is why the product owner is so essential.
You need to, you need the way we as humans organise around solving a problem is we understand that problem. We work together towards solving that problem, right? We work together towards a common goal. And part of the essential nature of the product owner is to set, communicate, understand, set and communicate those common product vision, strategy, goals that we’re going towards so that everybody within the bounds of that product, who cares about that product, can get behind it, whether those people are customer stakeholders or the people who are actually building the product. How are we all working together towards a common goal, a common vision, a common direction?
I mean, it’s so common that you see teams and products and customers, like the team delivers up something that the stakeholders are like, “What the heck is this?” and customers are like, “We don’t like this.” We’re not in tune; we’re not all working together towards a common goal. And that’s really the power of the product owner. That’s why they’re essential.
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