There is a vast difference between merely “being agile” vs. “doing Agile” and most of the Agile transformations take off with a lot of excitement and then this result-focused execution methodology fails with only the former implementation. Teams often embrace agility faster than business which forms the crux of “doing Agile”. Driving this transformation hand-in-hand with the Scrum Master/Agile coach is the very important role of the Product owner who is the epicenter of business agility. In this article, let me help you understand all about this quintessential role of Agile and what product owner best practices you need to know to excel in it. Keep learning!
A product owner is a sui generis role in the Agile scrum that is responsible for maximizing the value delivered by the team along with optimally managing the product backlog. A product owner works as the liaison between the business and technical teams to visualize and translate the project outcomes and define firm deliverables to attain business value. The scrum framework is based on the concept of 3-4-5 i.e. 3 roles, 4 artifacts, and 5 events and the product owner role is a significant role among the 3 roles viz, Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Scrum Team (also known as development team) who collectively formulate as a single unit working on Agile scrum principles.
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A product owner's role is a multi-faceted one and product owners are often seen donning many hats as a subject matter expert, end user apostle, acceptance tester, operations expert, and business user coordinator among others to achieve product vision and Scrum team goals. A product owner's role is particularly important in the scrum team where there is constant alignment and feedback required to iteratively move through the development process. Get a holistic understanding of the scrum framework, the roles, artifacts, events, and a lot more - explore the Certified Agile training from KnowledgeHut to explore further each role and its expectations in an Agile team.
At a high level, the product owner fulfills the following responsibilities in a scrum team:
In addition to the above tangible set of responsibilities, the product owner role carries a key function of maximizing the value delivered by the team as a part of the sprint.
Now that you have understood who is a product owner and what core functions a person in this role is expected to perform, let us take a look at some of the key product owner best practices that need to be inculcated to be successful and effective in this paramount role.
The product owner carries the responsibility of spearheading the product goals and vision by working closely with business teams or observing the market in terms of changes and ever-growing trends to keep product trajectory update to date. The PO also needs to be working in tandem with the development/technical teams to ensure all work being done aligns with the product vision, strategy and incorporates the latest feedback from the business/market and hence needs to make sure objectives, features and user stories are clearly outlined and detailed. This is no mean feat considering the cutting-edge competition and volatile environments in which projects operate. Product owner feedback examples are vastly noticed in the internal as well as the main sprint review session where acceptance of project deliverables by the product owner and stakeholders is the key area of focus.
A stakeholder is any person or entity who may have a direct or indirect interest in the project. By definition, it is well understood that the level of stakeholder interest or engagement in the project may be situational and subjective. Now to ensure that the product owner can relay the strategy and vision of the organization to development teams to meet the higher goals, a level of trust and bonding needs to be established between the stakeholders and product owner. The product owner must first identify and understand the stakeholders thoroughly, assess their power and interest and accordingly engage them at various levels to keep them informed, satisfied, and engaged to ensure project success and fruitful benefit realization. Engaging stakeholders effectively at all levels of the project is a set of smart goals for the product owners which every person in this role tries to ace.
Automation is undoubtedly one of the larger checkboxes on the product owner skills matrix - puzzled? Let's see - working with demanding stakeholders and a software development team at once is like walking on a tightrope trying to balance both sides. To avoid getting overwhelmed in performing this act of balance, the product owner must rely upon and make use of automation as much as possible. Well automation does not always mean the product owner should write JavaScript/selenium or any other white box code, it essentially implies that the product owner must smartly engage tools where possible to delegate and organize items, for example:
To be successful and relay information from the market research or business findings to the product roadmap, the product owner must respect the definition of ready on each user story along with ensuring that at least 2-3 sprints worth of tasks are readily available to the team in the order of priority. If the development team has to wait for the product owner to define or refine priorities from time to time or in case the team is blocked on a particular epic, it is a clear sign of the scrum process loopholes and indicates that the product owner needs to seal this gap to avoid mishaps or derailing the roadmap progress. The definition of ready metric in Agile is also one of the key product owner development goals to ensure gauging the effectiveness of the process as well as the person playing this role.
To be successful, a product owner must stay up to date with the market trends, business user feedback, and validation results from business or user acceptance testers - all of which become feedback for the product owner and result in shaping a finalized and more suitable minimum viable product (MVP) which will help meet outlined goals and deliver value to the user. The product owner must make use of daily stand-ups and most importantly the sprint review session to sharpen the product acceptance as well as the retrospective to sharpen and improve the process acceptance.
The backbone of any Agile team or process is how mature they are with deployments/releases and continuous iterations of delivery. This by default determines the effectiveness of the Agile practices and whether or not a team is truly following Agile in total or merely impromptu. Feedback from business teams and stakeholders is the main hay for any Agile team and serves to better the customer journey and increment product value delivery. The product owner must ensure that the team can adapt to the product owner's feedback and work in iterations of delivery to gain acceptance without getting to a point of risking work-in-progress by the team.
In addition to these, there are a lot of other best practices and industry standards for product owners to abide by - know and explore all of these with our most optimal KnowledgeHut Product Owner training.
Product owners carry the onus of product success and how the scrum team as a cohesive unit can translate the higher-level strategy into formidable iterations of value for the customer. To perform this role effectively and play the act of balance between business requirements, ever-changing market conditions, and day-to-day activities of the scrum team - the product owner must implement the best practices to minimize wastage, scope creep or any untoward situation that projects might otherwise risk facing and also meet the outlined product owner goals.
Let me talk about another scenario, stakeholders can be very influential and demanding in getting their objectives accomplished during the development lifecycle - this could be because of two reasons, the first being that the development team's efforts may have a positive impact or bring in other benefits causing higher interest of a few or secondly, the other way around that the current state of development may adversely impact or cause a change in the existing ways of working which may be subject to deferment or pressure of not being completed from certain stakeholders. The product owner needs to again balance these conflicting interests while focusing on iterative delivery and shorter time-to-market to achieve product goals as well as product owner development goals.
A product owner is one of the core roles as per the scrum framework and anyone playing this role is expected to be proficient in understanding and translating the business needs and wants into product specifications. On any given day, the product owner is expected to play a multi-faceted role which involves working closely among overlapping responsibilities yet being able to demarcate and delineate the expectations of the team. It is no mean feat to be able to bring multiple minds together on one vision and try to put that out in tangible or intangible forms, yet with the best practices at hand, the product owner makes this look easy and achievable.
A product owner role drives the full spectrum from discovery to delivery and deployment - To perform this role effectively, any aspirant or practitioner needs to possess:
i) Subject-matter expertise
ii) Natural communication and collaboration capabilities
iii) Ability to adapt and feedforward
A good product owner is first a great listener to listens, observes, and gauges the stakeholders and also a great orator to represents the voice of the customer to the team. In short, a good PO must engage stakeholders effectively and ensure their voices are heard and feedback is incorporated without causing a scope creep or impact on the planned team deliverables.
Though hierarchy is pretty organization-process oriented, in general, the product owner role goes up in the following corporate ladder:
1. Associate product owner
2. Product owner
3. Senior/Lead Product Owner
4. Head of Product
5. Chief Product Owner (CPO)
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