Product Owner
The primary responsibility of an Agile Product Owner is to represent the customer to the development team. Product Owner Responsibilities include:
- Managing and visualizing the product backlog or the prioritized list of requirements for future product development.
- Changing the order of items in the product backlog.
- Being available to the development team at all times to answer any questions team members have regarding the customer’s needs and the customer’s views of how the team is implementing a product feature.
The Product Owner Role is an essential member of any agile scrum team.
Navigating Common Pitfalls as a Product Owner
- A Product Owner shouldn’t be a Scrum Master. The Product Owner role is entirely separate from the Scrum Master, and both need to be separate people to make sure that responsibilities are not muddled.
- On many teams, the Product Manager also fills the Product Owner role. This situation leads to a crushing workload and difficult-to-manage expectations because Product Managers should be spending a fair amount of time understanding customers’ needs by stepping outside of the office.
- The need to be in the office as a Product Owner while still having a deep understanding of customers is a conflict that continues to create great difficulty for approximately 70% of Product Managers and Product Owners in Agile development organizations.
- Product Owners are placed in the engineering organization, while their Product Manager is part of Marketing or Product Management. Trying to please two different departments can create conflict between the two roles. The solution? Move Product Owners out of the engineering department so that the customer value is agreed upon before it’s presented to developers.
Product Owner Responsibilities
Here are some bullet points you may find in your Product Owner job description outlining a Product Owner’s responsibilities:
- Ensures user stories are “ready” for development to start work.
- Ensures each story has the correct acceptance criteria.
- Gathers, manages, and prioritizes the product backlog.
- Ensures close collaboration with the development team.
- Works closely with engineering and quality assurance to ensure the right customer problem is solved. This can involve sharing market research and competitive analysis with the team to best focus their efforts.
- Has technical product knowledge or specific domain expertise.
- Contributes to the work of the Product Manager as they define a product differentiation strategy.
- Tracks progress towards the release of a product.
The Product Owner MAY be asked to work on some or all of the following tasks:
- Create the product vision and roadmap that accomplishes the goal of the vision.
- Develops positioning for the product.
- Work with a cross-functional team in planning a product release.
- Develops personas either alone or in conjunction with a team including user experience experts.
- Define customer needs and the associated features to meet those needs.
- Advocates on behalf of the customer for the development team.
- Prioritizes defect or bug resolution.
If you also have Product Management responsibilities, check the list above and look at the image to determine how your actual role lines up. Is there any task that isn’t currently assigned to someone?
Product Owner Key Deliverables
Product Owners maximize value through careful selection of what developers work on next. Here is a list of the most comment documents or deliverables that you may be asked to create and manage. Be aware that each company has its own specific list and terminology.
- Product vision
- Problem statements and scenarios
- Product roadmaps
- Epics and User Stories
- Supporting documents, images, and possibly rough wireframes for user stories
While the list of deliverables is short, it is the Product Owner’s responsibility to create many, many user stories as part of their work.
Product Manager Responsibilities vs Product Owner Responsibilities
The key difference between a Product Manager and a Product Owner revolves around their mindset when approaching a problem to be solved.
Given a task or funding, the Product Manager responds, “If you give me this resource, I will deliver you this business result.” The Product Owner, on the other hand, says, “If you are going to spend this money, I will make sure you get the most value from your development investment.”
Look at our Agile Product Management guide for further information on how Agile and Scrum work.
Required Experience and Skills in the Product Owner Role
Product Owners call on a range of influencing and technical skills. Here is a list of what managers look for when filling a Product Owner role.
- Demonstrated success in releasing products that meet and exceed business objectives.
- Excellent detailed written and verbal communication skills, possibly including some user interface documentation skills.
- Subject matter expertise in the particular product or market and how to develop solutions for this market. Subject matter expertise should include specific industry or technical knowledge.
- Excellent teamwork skills especially with people less skilled in communication.
- Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams without formal authority. The ability to influence and work collaboratively with development teams is especially important.
Many Product Owners have a bachelor’s degree in the industry that their product serves or is in development. Some also have additional business training. Even after completing their undergrad education, many Product Owners go on to receive additional product management certifications.
What are you most likely to hear a Product Owner say?
“My development team and I worked closely to make sure that each of the user stories was completely understood. I am confident that they will deliver what we agreed on at the next product review.”