Scrum and the Product Owner – Can you do without one?

The Product Manager has always been an important role for any product development company, whether your product is a car or a piece of software. The product manager manages one or more products, and shapes its creation right from concept to design to creation and production. This is what Wiki tells us about the product manager.

Any software project has a customer or sponsor who hails from the ‘business side’. What this means is that this person knows the company’s line of business and products inside out, and more importantly has a direct line to the actual customer or end-user. That may be why this individual is sometimes referred to as a ‘customer proxy’. Knowing your customer then is key to establishing what your target market segment is, where your product should be positioned, and indeed this will not only drive what features your product should have but also what the product itself should be.

Agile or Scrum has the Product Owner to perform this function. As any basic text on Scrum will tell you, the Product Owner is an integral part of the Scrum team. The product owner is responsible for the success of the project and has to ensure that it delivers appropriate returns on investment (ROI).

Roman Pichler offers a pictorial depiction of all the duties of a product owner. He also suggests that the product owner needs to be in the driver’s seat all the time.

Jack Milunsky sums up the product owner’s activities nicely.

Following are what I feel are some of the desirable traits of a product owner –

1)      Be 100% engaged

It may not be feasible to physically be with the team a 100% of the time, but a product owner should certainly be available to the team via phone, email, chat etc. This will encourage the team to raise flags instantly and resolve backlog related questions early on, saving a lot of time – a critical entity in a time boxed sprint.

2)      Product backlog champion

The product owner owns the product backlog, and needs to know it inside out. (S)he should also work on it constantly to keep it up to date. The product backlog should reflect the latest customer priorities for the product, or critical product features at any given time. Ordering (or prioritizing) the product backlog is another crucial task for the PO. This should happen continuously even during a sprint, so that extra time need not be spent on the backlog during the next sprint planning session.

3)      Own the product, be tuned in

The product owner is ultimately responsible for what happens to the product and hence for the outcome of any sprints/projects of the Scrum team.  The product owner should be aware of all daily updates, burndown etc. and have a clear picture of where the team is headed at any given time. The product owner should be able to cancel a sprint if needed, and should also be able to steer the team so that they continue to work toward delivering the sprint, and hence the product backlog items.

4)      Subject Matter Expert

The product owner should know the minutiae of a given product line, its features, the importance of each feature, user behavior, drivers for certain product attributes etc. etc. In short, the product owner should be a veritable encyclopedia on anything related to the product. 

This is necessary to establish trust and rapport between the developers and the product owner. Just as consistent velocity and successful sprints will establish the skill of the developers in a Scrum team, in-depth product knowledge and ability to get questions answered will establish the skill of a product owner.

Practically, there may be a learning curve even for a product owner, assuming an otherwise skilled product owner who has taken on a new product.

5)      Willingness to learn

It is quite difficult to be as omniscient as Yoda! A product owner should exhibit a willingness to learn. He/she should not hesitate to ask questions as needed. They could be product related questions for which the product owner needs to elicit information from multiple sources, or could also be process related questions that a Scrum Master can answer, or something related to the dynamics of the development team.

6)      Collaborative and communicative

Collaboration is the cornerstone of any Scrum team. The product owner should be an eager participant in any discussions related to stories or backlog items, since their comments can change how a particular item is built. This can result in cost savings even within a 2 week time boxed sprint.

The product owner should not hesitate to deliver news – both good and bad – to the Scrum team. The product owner should be friendly toward the team, and be able to embrace the ‘everyone at par’ mantra of Agile. The product owner should also be patient and take a back seat when needed, allowing the team to self-organize.

The product owner should happily co-exist with the Scrum Master, and if needed heed to the SM’s feedback regarding workload, team morale etc.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Jim Trott provides a good list of necessary attributes of the product owner. 

A product owner may need to apply different strategies for success depending on the industry, the product itself, timelines, a particular team etc. But one thing is certain. The product owner is the driving force behind any Scrum team and an integral part of one.

To sum up, a product owner is a liasion between the end-user or customers and the Scrum team, and serves as a nexus or conduit. A good product owner will have not only the pulse of his target customer, but also that of his Scrum team to deliver optimum value to the product/organization.